AN art that achieves beauty by means of the grace of simple lines, elegance of proportion and other simple resources of composition, is the art of a vigorous nation. Such an art scorns florid treatment, surface realism, triviality; and such an art was that of early Rome. It had that something clumsily called semiasceticism, that attaches to dignity.
A national art quality exists, as is axiomatic, upon a basis and by virtue of a corresponding public state of mind; each influencing the other, but the public state of mind being the force that shapes the art, rather than the reverse. The spirit of simplicity dominated Greece through many centuries of her grandeur. In Rome it endured until Rome grew rich. Its coexistence in the case of the two peoples was no more than a coincidence; they arrived at their common simplicity through wholly different processes.
In Greece, beauty was understood. Action and adornment were restrained because their value was found to be multiplied by sparing use; because, too, any excess of them detracted from the great qualities of line and proportion. In Greece, moreover, beauty dissociated from subject or sentiment could always find an appreciative reception; the Hellenic mind loved beauty for its own sake. And that is the cause of the reserve that governs the best Greek art.
Early Rome, too, instilled into her children the spirit of simplicity. Not, however, with any understanding of the relation of simplicity to beauty and dignity. War and lust for conquest made the early Roman stern; and simplicity, attached to a very real asceticism, was thrust upon him by the uncompromising hand of poverty. But, after a few centuries of fattening on loot and tribute, what of Rome? Stupidity, degeneracy and vulgarity.
Loot and tribute! In respect to riches both material and mental, other peoples’ contributions to Rome’s destiny were of a degree of importance sometimes underrated. Her monumental physical structure was built from taxes gathered by the mailed hand. In respect to her thought, expressed in essays, poems, orations, letters, commentaries or whatsoever other form, the extent of other nations’ contribution to Rome’s apparent originality is, at first glance, less evident. Upon Greek foundations of narrative structure, metre, and form in general, Roman writings are built, Romanised though they be in subject-matter—but Rome’s sterility of invention in that field is suited rather to the discussion of literary men than of dance-lovers.
But sculpture is pertinent. The first so-called Roman art was accomplished by carving Roman faces upon thickened figures in Greek poses, executing them in Greek technique of modelling, and naming them Roman gods and senators. Later the Greek simplicity of modelling was discarded; to replace it there was achieved an ostentatious mediocrity. The Pompeian frescoes? The good ones were painted by Greeks, brought across for the purpose. And the vivacious little statues found in Pompeii express the same artistically witty point of view.
In the field of material gain and convenience Rome’s contribution to the world is not to be questioned. But water-supply, paving, land laws and fortifications are not related to questions of taste. It is Roman taste of which one tries to form a conception, in order to explain, at least in part, the disappointing history of dancing under the Cæsars. And the mere direction of attention to Rome’s relation to the arts anticipates the story of her treatment of the dance, leaving only details to be told.
First in chronology is found the dancing symbolical of war. Then comes a simple religious choreography, under the Salic priests, supplementing the ritual of sacrifice. As time goes on Greek dances are transplanted, with the degree of success to be expected among a race whose minds, though active, are pleased only by material power, gain, and ostentation: by a process of atrophy following non-appreciation, the symbolism disappears from symbolic dances and the ideal of beauty from the purely beautiful dances. They became at best a display of agility to amuse rustics. More generally they fell into the service of sex allurement; not the suggestive merely, nor the provocative, but unbridled depiction of what should not be revealed and of things that should not exist. This condition of affairs is more than hinted in works of some of the much-read Latin writers, stated by archæologists, and confirmed by certain Pompeian statues.
Such offences, despite the resentment they arouse in the feelings of any naturally constituted person, might be partially pardoned by the dance-lover if they contributed anything to the dance. But absolutely they do not. There is latent drama and good drama in sex relationships; but not one accent of its valid expression can be traced to dances of obscenity. The dancer who gives himself over to obscenity loses, every time, the things that made him a dancer: form, truth and beauty of movement and posture. Where the art of dancing is appreciated, artists avoid obscene suggestion. Where it is not, many are forced to it in order to make a living. However, even where the art is appreciated, obscenity furnishes the incompetent a means of pretence of an artist’s career; for obscenity is sure of a mixed following of rabblement, some in rags and some in velvet.
Among the Romans themselves, actual participation in the dance was not popular. Propriety forbade so close an association with an art disfigured and dirtied, the Roman reviling as unclean the image soiled by his own hand. From Spain, Greece and Syria people were brought to dance before gourmands and wasters, degraded to the level of their patrons’ appreciation, and discarded when they had exhausted the scope of novelties suitable to the demand. Several centuries of Roman employment of dancers contributed not one step, gesture or expression to the art; the plastic and graphic records show only that which is Greek, or, on the other hand inane, vulgar, or degenerate. To the latter levels sank the Ludiones and the Saturnalia; instituted as religious celebrations, ending as orgies.