sculptor —Roman nationality impressed its stamp on the coins and
gems, reliefs and statues, marbles and bronzes, of the time of the
Emperors. The principal features of Roman art are a somewhat
ponderous dignity,' and a want of poetical inspiration, but withal a
close imitation of native, national truthfulness, and great regard for
individuality; without that Greek freshness, freedom and harmony
which rou^g in the beholder the consciousness of the divine nature
of our soul. The composition of the Roman works of art is heavy
the execution often over-polished and empty. Whilst the Greek
artist selected his subjects from mythology, the Roman liked to represent
sacrifices, triumphal processions, military marches, battles,
and “ allocutions, ’ marriage-feasts and other scenes of domestic life.
The Greek idealized'the features of great men; the Roman did not
ennoble the ugliness of old Tiberius, the idiocy of Domitian and
the ferocious looks of Commodus and Caracalla. The Greek made
scarcely any distinction, in sculpture, between the Greek and the
barbarian—the same idealism surrounds them both, and assimilates
them to one another; the Roman artist made a eharacteristical difference
between enemies of Rome and the civis Romanus. Still, at the
time of the Emperors, the Roman type itself had ceased to be constant
Citizenship having been extended to half a world, barbarians
constituted the bulk of the army, and their equally-barbarian officers
were raised first into the Senate, then to the imperial throne. Accordin
g ly ,^ artists of Rome gave, on the whole, less importance to the
type than to the costume of the foreign hostile nations, by which
alone they differed from the mongrel Romans, who then represented
a cosmopolitan amalgam of all the white races. On the great
cameos of the time of Augustus and Tiberius, at Vienna and Paris
(which, by their dramatic and picturesque composition of the groups
materially differ from Greek reliefs), the Pannonian and Vindelician
prisoners have no individual features; nor is the statue of the “ river
Jordan” on the triumphal arch of the emperor Titus characterized
by a Shemitic physiognomy; but, on the column and arch of Traian
which contains the best of all the Roman works of art, we easily
recognise the Dacian, [70] whose features are perpetuated in the Wal-
lachian of our days. In the dying gladiator of the Capitol, and on
the sarcophagus of the Vigna Ammendola,1® we see the Celtic Gaul
® ^Presented; and Mr. Gottling recognises an ancient German
Rome11 a prisoner which adorned a triumphal arch at
After the eclectic idealism prevalent under the reign of the
Emperor Hadrian, we no longer find any endeavor to fix the
188 Monummti Intditi delV Imlituto Archeologka di Roma, 1, Pi"
national peculiarities of foreign nations on monuments of art. The
Teutonic Markomans on the columns of Antoninus, the Turanian
Parthians on the arch of Septimus Severus, differ only by their costume
from Dacians, and from the Roman soldiers who fight against
them; and we must admit that the pharaonic Egyptian artists
remained unsurpassed, even by Greeks and Romans, in the accuracy
with which they observed and rendered the national lype of all the
tribes with which they happened to come into contact. The Assyrians
and Persians were second in this respect to the Egyptians; still
they were, on the whole, faithful enough, whereas with the Greeks any
national peculiarity merged in the glorification of the human form:
accordingly, Egyptians and Asiatics are by them drawn and sculptured
with Hellenic features. The Roman is by far more truthful,
but his art is short-lived. Before Augustus it is either Etruscan or
Greek; after Septimus Severus it loses its national character, and
step by step transforms itself into the Byzantine Christian. Two
centuries carry us from the beginning of Roman art to its decay;
its full bloom lasted only just for the score of years which embraces
the reign of the emperor Trajan, since under Hadrian it lost its
)Roman features, and was swamped by an elegant and refined imitation
of every style of art. About the same time that the imperial
throne fell into the hands of Asiatic Syrians, of Africans, Arabs, and
northern barbarians, Roman art became barbarous, and revived'only
when, about the time of Justinian and his successors, a new nationality,—
the Graeco-Byzantine— consolidated and crystallized itself
under the influences of Christianity out of the mixture of all the
races in the Roman empire.
The earliest authentic Roman portrait Fig. 67.
we know is the likeness of P. Cornelius
Scipio Africanus [67].189 All earlier effigies
were either not portraits at all,—as
for instance, the seven Tuscan statues of
the kings, mentioned in the old authors,
which stood before the Capitol, — or
they are too indistinct to be of use for
ethnology. This applies to the heads
we see on the family coins of Rome, upon
which the magistrates liked to perpetuate
the memory of illustrious ancestors.
Hone of these silver coins are anterior to D x r . . . I S c i i i o A f r ic a n u s . tne year 269 b . c ; their size is small
189 Visconti, Iconographie romaine, Paris, 1817, pl. Ill, fig. 2.