These soldiers, politicians, men of business in Rome, gave to religious things that cold, practical sense which they gave to everything else. It is thanks to them that a laic undercurrent always circulated in Roman religion, that during the whole duration of the republic and of the empire no conflict ever broke out between it and the state; and that the government of Rome, in spite of all the demonstrations of piety which it lavished, never threatened to become a theocracy.[g]
TREATMENT OF OTHER NATIONS
But while morality, good faith, and self-denial prevailed among themselves, it is clear that the Romans laid no such restrictions upon their dealings with other nations. This great defect is common to Rome with all antiquity. The calmest Greek philosopher, Aristotle, regarded barbarians as naturally the slaves of the Greeks. International law was unknown, except in certain formalities observed in declaring war and making peace, and in the respect paid to the persons of ambassadors. This absence of common humanity and generosity to foreigners appears in many pages of this history, in none more strongly than in that which records the treatment of the Samnite leader C. Pontius. Gleams of better feeling appear in the war with Pyrrhus; the chivalric character of the king awakened something of a kindred spirit in the stern and rigid Romans. But nothing could be more ungenerous than the conduct of Rome to Carthage, after the Mercenary War; and still baser pieces of diplomacy occur in the subsequent dealings of the senate with the Achæans and with Carthage.
THE FINE ARTS
If Hellenic forms of thought and speech invaded the domain of literature, much more was this the case with the arts of design. There are not wanting examples to show that before this time sculpture and painting were held in honour at Rome. The consul Carvilius (in 293 B.C.) employed part of the spoils taken from the Samnites in setting up a colossal bronze statue on the Capitoline. A quadriga, executed in terra-cotta by an Etruscan artist, is ascribed to the same date. Statues were erected in the Forum to honour divers great men of olden time. Many temples were built in thanksgiving for victories, most of which were adorned by Etruscan or Greek artists. The temple of Salus was ornamented about 305 B.C. by paintings from the hand of that C. Fabius who adopted the name of Pictor and transmitted it as an honour to his family. The Ogulnii, in their ædileship (296 B.C.), set up in the Capitol a bronze group representing the wolf suckling the twins. A painting of the battle in which the Romans defeated Hiero in 263 adorned the walls of the senate house.
Of these works, and others not recorded by history, no trace remains except the famous wolf now preserved in the Capitoline Museum. The twins are a later addition, but the animal is probably the original work noticed by Cicero and Livy. It bears the well-known marks of the archaic Greek art in the sharp, rigid forms of the limbs and muscles, the peculiar expression of the face, and the regular knots of hair about the neck and head. Here, then, we trace Hellenic artists at Rome. Others of the works mentioned are expressly assigned to Etruscan artists; and it may be remarked that Fabius, the only native artist of whom we hear, belonged to a family always associated in history with Etruscans.
But when Rome had conquered southern Italy, she was brought at once in contact with works of the finest Greek art. No coins of old Greece are so beautiful as those of her colonial settlements in the west; and it is in the coins of Rome, strange to remark, that we first trace the indisputable effect of Greek art.
Up to the time when Italy was conquered, the Romans had used only copper money of a most clumsy and inconvenient kind. A pound of this metal by weight was stamped with the rude effigy of a ship’s prow, and this was the original as or libra. Gradually the as was reduced in weight till, in the necessities of the Second Punic War, it became only one-sixth of the libra by weight; yet it retained its ancient name, just as the pound sterling of silver, originally equivalent to a pound Troy-weight, is now not more than one-third, or as the French livre is a much smaller fraction of that weight.[72] But even this diminished coin was clumsy for use, as trade increased with increasing empire. After the conquest of southern Italy the precious metals became more plentiful, and the coinage of the conquered cities supplied beautiful models. The first denarius, or silver piece of ten asses, was struck in the year 269 B.C., and is evidently imitated from the coins of Magna Græcia. The Roman generals who commanded in these districts stamped money for the use of their armies with the old insignia of the conquered cities. The workmanship is, indeed, inferior to the best specimens of Hellenic coins, but far superior to anything Roman, before or after. Gold coins of similar model were not struck till near the close of the Hannibalic War (205 B.C.). The great mass of Roman coins which we possess belongs to the last century of the republic. They usually bear the family emblems of the person who presided over the mint, or of the consuls for whose use they were struck; but the execution always remained rude and unattractive.
