THE ART OF THE ROMANS.*

IN spite of the reawakening of interest in Roman art which, as Mr. Walters justly remarks in his preface, has been one of the most noteworthy features in the progress of classical archteology in recent years, the time has not yet come when a critic, who seta out to write such a book as this can omit to face the preliminary question whether and in what sense we areientitled to speak of a distinctively Roman art. To many the famous lines of Virgil quoted by Mr. Walters (from Conington's translation) stamp the Romans as an inartistic

race:

" Others, belie, with happier grace. From bronze or stone shall call the face* Plead doubtful causes, map the skies, And tell when planets set or rise ; Art' of th Ronja, fly It B. Walters. With 72 plates and 10 illustra- i1Urn theteit! ns

' LoadOu'llifethnini and CO. [15s. net.] ' But, Roman, thou, do thou control The nations far and wide :. Be this thy genius, to impose The rule of peace on vanquished foes, Show pity to the humble soul, And crush the sons of pride."

The true spirit of the Roman, they hold, was shown by Cato the Elder when he spoke of the statues plundered by Marcellus in

the sack of Syracuse as enemies within the walls of Rome, or by Cicero in the contemptuous affectation of ignorance, extending even to the names of the great masters,. with which he recounts the brutal spoliation of the art treasures of Sicily by Verres. But we meet with a very different Cicero in his private correspondence ; and it was not the vulgar ostentation of the parvenu., but—at least among the more cultured of the Romans—a genuine love of the beautiful, as enshrined in the creations of the Greek genius, which filled, the palaces of Rome and the villas of the Campagna and the Bay of Naples with the countless copies of Hellenic master- pieces, of which enough have escaped the barbarian and the lime-burner to fill the museums of modern Europe. It is

true that the demand for copies of classical works gave no stimulus to the creative faculty ; indeed, much of the work thus turned out to order seems to us, who have learnt to appreciate time very, handiwork of Praxiteles and his contest'. porarios, dull, spiritless, and, as the Germans put it, iter- /re-a/0z ; and if Roman art had remained a mere rechavffe of that of the Greeks it might have been dismissed in a. brief appendix to the story of a higher development. But

Fate and the Emperors willed otherwise. The salient facts which it behoves us to note and remember in this

connexion are two : first, that there existed amongst the peoples of Italy it faculty of artistic .insight and expres- sion very different in kind from the plastic vision of the

Greeks, with whom to see was to idealize, but with an accent no less clearly marked ; secondly, that the Roman never lost his grip of tradition—whether it were of his family, his dynasty, or his race—and looked to art, as to literature, for the means of giving that tradition permanence. Thus it comes about that the finest productions . of the Roman artist are historical and monumental, whilst among the arts which flourished under private patronage portrait sculpture is undoubtedly the most important, though the love of the wealthy Romans for precious metals and materials led to the

production of notable masterpieces in plate and engraved gems. Mr. Walters is well aware of this, but the scheme of his work obliges him to include in his survey all branches of art, and his excellent and well-chosen illustrations corer practically the whole field ; only the later historical monu- ments (such as the Arches of Severus and Constantine) are under-represented. We are glad to see that art in the pro- vinces meets with the recognition. which it deserves. The exhibition of casts recently assembled in the Baths of Diocle- tian at Rome has put provincial art in an entirely fresh light,

and given an impulse to its study which we may hope will in due season bear much fruit. The time has not yet come to disentangle the several strands of development, and we are in full accord with Mr. Walters in the remarks which he makes on p. 154 ou the antecedents of .

Gallo-Belgic sculpture as seen in the reliefs of Neumagen and the monument of Igel. The first series, including, as ho reminds us, "such subjects as the return of a hunter, a toilet scene, a school scene and a circus, a landowner reeeiv- ing payment of rents from tenants, and ships laden with casks of Moselle wine wrapped in straw," all richly painted, have by some been attributed to sculptors trained in Southern Gaul, and thus inspired by the Greek tradition which was kept alive at Massilia; others, again, have hazarded the less, attractive theory that Greek influences penetrated to the Rhine Valley by way of Macedonia and the Danube. Mr. Walters judiciously observes that " the genre scenes seem. to associate themselves equally well with the Hellenistic' reliefs of the Augustan period, while scenes from family and social life are sufficiently frequent in Italian wall-paintings; the claims of Rome herself cannot, therefore, . be altogether ignored." We may add that a glance at the volumes of Esperandieu's Bas-reliefs de la Gazde romaine will show that the interest of the provincial sculptor in scenes of private life was not confined to the regions to which access was given by the Rhone Valley. Thus the keynote of Roman art, at .any.

rate in the Latinized west, is struck in every region—its close contact with reality.

Mr. Walters addresses himself to the general reader, rather than the archaeologist, in his endeavour to popularize his subject. He is generally content to follow recent authorities, such as Mr. Waft on portraiture and Gauckler on mosaic, and we do not therefore look for .detailed discussion of the fascinating and of ten difficult problems which beset the student of what must :still be called a "new" subject. Thus he dis- misses very briefly the interesting and beautiful medallions with hunting and sacrificial scenes which now adorn the Arch of Constantine, but-were undoubtedly taken from some earlier monument, and are remarkable for the fact that the head of the emperor has in some of the scenes been worked over in the style of a later age. Obviously we have here a double problem—that of determining the original date of the medallions and that which is raised by the alteration men- tioned. Both have been much debated in recent years, but Mr. Walters is.content to refer.to the article -which initiated the discussion. We should have been glad to hear his opinion on the differences of style which have been held to exist between the two series.

In writing for the uninstructed Mr. Walters has not always been careful of details. Livia was not the daughter, but the wife, of Augustus fp. :99) ; nor was Britain conquered by " Aulus Plautius and .Agricola" in A.D. 43 (p. 168). We do not know what is meant by an inscription in situ recording Hadrian's- restoration of the Pantheon, and are inclined to suspect a confusion between that emperor and Severna fp. 29). 4lPrudity " for "prudery" is a curious solecism (p. 47).