[922] See especially Dioscorides, ii. Tinctures and ointments made from toads, scorpions, bugs, woodlice, centipedes, cockroaches, testes of stag and horse, etc., were staple preparations. The realistic coloured illustrations in the great edition published by Lonicerus in 1563 with a colossal commentary, are worth looking at. The pills of seminal fluid (à la Brown-Séquard) decried in the Pistis Sophia appear to have been merely a mystic remedy.
[923] The profession did not yet stand apart from the lay community as pronouncedly as at present. Thus Celsus, author of a noted medical treatise, was an amateur, a Roman patrician in fact; and the precious MS. of Dioscorides, with coloured miniatures, preserved at Vienna, was executed (c. 500) for a Byzantine princess, Julia Anicia, daughter of Olybrius, one of the fleeting emperors of the West.
[924] Less than a century previously Plutarch had declared the common opinion that Fortune, having divested herself of her pinions and winged shoes, had settled down as a permanent inhabitant of the Palatine Hill; De Fortuna Rom.
[925] Art in the time of Augustus and Tiberius has to be judged mainly by the wall-paintings recovered at Rome and Pompeii, many of which are highly meritorious. For succeeding centuries a series of sculptures remain which allow us to keep the retreat of art in constant view. The chief landmarks are: 1. The arch of Titus and the column of Trajan; 2. The Antonine column and the arch of Severus; 3. The arch of Constantine, remarkable for its crudity and for some spaces being filled by figures ravished from that of Titus; 4. The Theodosian column at CP.; though much defaced, the incapacity of the executant is still recognizable. The reproduction of the Arcadian pillar published by Banduri (see p. 49) cannot be regarded as a faithful copy, it being evident that the artist has elevated the bas-reliefs to his own standard. In Agincourt, op. cit., and Mau’s Pompeii these subjects are pictorially represented, as well as in many other works.
[926] Cod. Theod., XIII, iv, 1. Architectis plurimis opus est, sed quia non sunt, etc. (334). His buildings were so hastily run up that they soon went to ruin; Zosimus, ii, 32. Hence, perhaps, C.’s opinion that there were no proper architects.
[927] Cod. Theod., XIII, iv, 1, 4. Few, however, of these regulations, if any, were new; they were mostly in force before the reign of Commodus; Pand., L, vi, 9.
[928] In the eleventh century, after a flush of splendour in the already greatly contracted Empire, owing to the conquests of the Saracens, this particular form of degeneracy began to be manifested. “Les personnages sont trop longs, leur bras trop maigres, leur gestes et leur mouvements plein d’affectation; une rigidité cadavérique est repandue sur l’ensemble”; Kondakoff, Hist. de l’art byz., Paris, 1886, ii, p. 138.
[929] This was not altogether new to the Greeks; for in the juxtaposition of Athenian and Assyrian bas-reliefs at the British Museum it can be seen that even the school of Phidias adhered to some types which had originated in the East, drawing of horses, etc.
[930] See Lethaby and Swainson for arguments on this head. Certain churches in the domical style at Antioch, Salonica, etc., are maintained by some authorities to be anterior to the sixth century; op. cit., x. For illustrations see Vogüé, Archit. de la Syrie cent., Paris, 1865-77.
[931] Thus even maidens in a state of nudity engaged publicly in the athletic games at Sparta and Chios; Plutarch, Lycurgus; Athenaeus, xiii, 20. The parade of virgins before Zeuxis at Agrigentum in order that he might select models for his great picture of the birth of Venus, as related by Pliny, has often been quoted; Hist. Nat., xxxv, 36. Yet even among the Greeks a squeamish modesty existed in some quarters, as is evidenced by the famous statue of Venus by Praxiteles having been rejected by the Coans in favour of a draped one, previous to its being set up at Cnidus; ibid., xxxvi, 4; cf. Lucian, Amores.