The History of Rome, Book II - Theodor Mommsen
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Character of Etruscan Art
The general character of Etruscan works of art is, on the one hand, a
sort of barbaric extravagance in material as well as in style; on the
other hand, an utter absence of original development. Where the Greek
master lightly sketches, the Etruscan disciple lavishes a scholar's
diligence; instead of the light material and moderate proportions of
the Greek works, there appears in the Etruscan an ostentatious stress
laid upon the size and costliness, or even the mere singularity, of
the work. Etruscan art cannot imitate without exaggerating; the chaste
in its hands becomes harsh, the graceful effeminate, the terrible
hideous, and the voluptuous obscene; and these features become more
prominent, the more the original stimulus falls into the background
and Etruscan art finds itself left to its own resources. Still more
surprising is the adherence to traditional forms and a traditional
style. Whether it was that a more friendly contact with Etruria at the
outset allowed the Hellenes to scatter there the seeds of art, and
that a later epoch of hostility impeded the admission into Etruria
of the more recent developments of Greek art, or whether, as is more
probable, the intellectual torpor that rapidly came over the nation
was the main cause of the phenomenon, art in Etruria remained
substantially stationary at the primitive stage which it had occupied
on its first entrance. This, as is well known, forms the reason why
Etruscan art, the stunted daughter, was so long regarded as the
mother, of Hellenic art. Still more even than the rigid adherence to
the style traditionally transmitted in the older branches of art,
the sadly inferior handling of those branches that came into vogue
afterwards, particularly of sculpture in stone and of copper-casting
as applied to coins, shows how quickly the spirit of Etruscan art
evaporated. Equally instructive are the painted vases, which are found
in so enormous numbers in the later Etruscan tombs. Had these come
into current use among the Etruscans as early as the metal plates
decorated with contouring or the painted terra-cottas, beyond doubt
they would have learned to manufacture them at home in considerable
quantity, and of a quality at least relatively good; but at the period
at which this luxury arose, the power of independent reproduction
wholly failed--as the isolated vases provided with Etruscan
inscriptions show--and they contented themselves with buying
instead of making them.
North Etruscan and South Etruscan Art
But even within Etruria there appears a further remarkable distinction
in artistic development between the southern and northern districts.
It is South Etruria, particularly in the districts of Caere,
Tarquinii, and Volci, that has preserved the great treasures of art
which the nation boasted, especially in frescoes, temple decorations,
gold ornaments, and painted vases. Northern Etruria is far inferior;
no painted tomb, for example, has been found to the north of Chiusi.
The most southern Etruscan cities, Veii, Caere, and Tarquinii, were
accounted in Roman tradition the primitive and chief seats of Etruscan
art; the most northerly town, Volaterrae, with the largest territory
of all the Etruscan communities, stood most of all aloof from art
While a Greek semi-culture prevailed in South Etruria, Northern
Etruria was much more marked by an absence of all culture. The causes
of this remarkable contrast may be sought partly in differences of
nationality--South Etruria being largely peopled in all probability by
non-Etruscan elements(42)--partly in the varying intensity of Hellenic
influence, which must have made itself very decidedly felt at Caere in
particular. The fact itself admits of no doubt. The more injurious on
that account must have been the early subjugation of the southern half
of Etruria by the Romans, and the Romanizing--which there began very
early--of Etruscan art. What Northern Etruria, confined to its own
efforts, was able to produce in the way of art, is shown by the copper
coins which essentially belong to it.
Character of Latin Art
Let us now turn from Etruria to glance at Latium. The latter, it is
true, created no new art; it was reserved for a far later epoch of
culture to develop on the basis of the arch a new architecture
different from the Hellenic, and then to unfold in harmony with that
architecture a new style of sculpture and painting. Latin art is
nowhere original and often insignificant; but the fresh sensibility
and the discriminating tact, which appropriate what is good in others,
constitute a high artistic merit. Latin art seldom became barbarous,
and in its best products it comes quite up to the level of Greek
technical execution. We do not mean to deny that the art of Latium,
at least in its earlier stages, had a certain dependence on the
undoubtedly earlier Etruscan;(43) Varro may be quite right in
supposing that, previous to the execution by Greek artists of the clay
figures in the temple of Ceres,(44) only "Tuscanic" figures adorned
the Roman temples; but that, at all events, it was mainly the direct
influence of the Greeks that led Latin art into its proper channel,
is self-evident, and is very obviously shown by these very statues as
well as by the Latin and Roman coins. Even the application of graving
on metal in Etruria solely to the toilet mirror, and in Latium solely
to the toilet casket, indicates the diversity of the art-impulses that
affected the two lands. It does not appear, however, to have been
exactly at Rome that Latin art put forth its freshest vigour; the
Roman -asses- and Roman -denarii- are far surpassed in fineness and
taste of workmanship by the Latin copper, and the rare Latin silver,
coins, and the masterpieces of painting and design belong chiefly to
Praeneste, Lanuvium, and Ardea. This accords completely with the
realistic and sober spirit of the Roman republic which we have already
described--a spirit which can hardly have asserted itself with equal
intensity in other parts of Latium. But in the course of the fifth
century, and especially in the second half of it, there was a mighty
activity in Roman art. This was the epoch, in which the construction
of the Roman arches and Roman roads began; in which works of art like
the she-wolf of the Capitol originated; and in which a distinguished
man of an old Roman patrician clan took up his pencil to embellish a
newly constructed temple and thence received the honorary surname of
the "Painter." This was not accident. Every great age lays grasp on
all the powers of man; and, rigid as were Roman manners, strict as was
Roman police, the impulse received by the Roman burgesses as masters
of the peninsula or, to speak more correctly, by Italy united for the
first time as one state, became as evident in the stimulus given to
Latin and especially to Roman art, as the moral and political decay of
the Etruscan nation was evident in the decline of art in Etruria.
As the mighty national vigour of Latium subdued the weaker nations,
it impressed its imperishable stamp also on bronze and on marble.
Notes for Book II Chapter IX
1. I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences
2. The account given by Dionysius (vi. 95; comp. Niebuhr, ii. 40) and
by Plutarch (Camill. 42), deriving his statement from another passage
in Dionysius regarding the Latin festival, must be understood to apply
rather to the Roman games, as, apart from other grounds, is strikingly
evident from comparing the latter passage with Liv. vi. 42 (Ritschl,
Parerg. i. p. 313). Dionysius has--and, according to his wont when in
error, persistently--misunderstood the expression -ludi maximi-.
There was, moreover, a tradition which referred the origin of the
national festival not, as in the common version, to the conquest of
the Latins by the first Tarquinius, but to the victory over the Latins
at the lake Regillus (Cicero, de Div. i. 26, 55; Dionys. vii. 71).
That the important statements preserved in the latter passage from
Fabius really relate to the ordinary thanksgiving-festival, and not to
any special votive solemnity, is evident from the express allusion to
the annual recurrence of the celebration, and from the exact agreement
of the sum of the expenses with the statement in the Pseudo-Asconius
(p. 142 Or.).
3. II. III. Curule Aedileship
4. I. II. Art
5. I. XV. Metre
6. I. XV. Masks
7. II. VIII. Police f.
8. I. XV. Melody
9. A fragment has been preserved:
-Hiberno pulvere, verno luto, grandia farra
Camille metes-
We do not know by what right this was afterwards regarded as the
oldest Roman poem (Macrob. Sat. v. 20; Festus, Ep. v. Flaminius,
p. 93, M.; Serv. on Virg. Georg, i. 101; Plin. xvii. 2. 14).
10. II. VIII. Appius Claudius
11. II. VIII. Rome and the Romans of This Epoch
12. The first places in the list alone excite suspicion, and may have
been subsequently added, with a view to round off the number of years
between the flight of the king and the burning of the city to 120.
13. I. VI. Time and the Occasion of the Reform, II. VII. System of
Government
14. II. VIII Rome and the Romans of This Epoch. According to the
annals Scipio commands in Etruria and his colleague in Samnium, and
Lucania is during this year in league with Rome; according to the
epitaph Scipio conquers two towns in Samnium and all Lucania.
15. I. XI. Jurisdiction, second note.
16. They appear to have reckoned three generations to a hundred years
and to have rounded off the figures 233 1/3 to 240, just as the epoch
between the king's flight and the burning of the city was rounded off
to 120 years (II. IX. Registers of Magistrates, note). The reason why
these precise numbers suggested themselves, is apparent from the
similar adjustment (above explained, I. XIV. The Duodecimal System)
of the measures of surface.
17. I. XII. Spirits
18. I. X. Relations of the Western Italians to the Greeks
19. The "Trojan colonies" in Sicily, mentioned by Thucydides, the
pseudo-Scylax, and others, as well as the designation of Capua as a
Trojan foundation in Hecataeus, must also be traced to Stesichorus
and his identification of the natives of Italy and Sicily with
the Trojans.
20. According to his account Rome, a woman who had fled from Ilion
to Rome, or rather her daughter of the same name, married Latinos,
king of the Aborigines, and bore to him three sons, Romos, Romylos,
and Telegonos. The last, who undoubtedly emerges here as founder
of Tusculum and Praeneste, belongs, as is well known, to the legend
of Odysseus.
21. II. IV. Fruitlessness of the Celtic Victory
22. II. VII. Relations between the East and West
23. II. VII. The Roman Fleet
24. II. II. Political Value of the Tribunates, II. II.
The Valerio-Horatian Laws
25. I. XIV. Corruption of Language and Writing
26. In the two epitaphs, of Lucius Scipio consul in 456, and of the
consul of the same name in 495, -m and -d are ordinarily wanting in
the termination of cases, yet -Luciom- and -Gnaivod- respectively
occur once; there occur alongside of one another in the nominative
-Cornelio- and -filios-; -cosol-, -cesor-, alongside of -consol-,
-censor-; -aidiles-, -dedet-, -ploirume- (= -plurimi-) -hec- (nom.
sing.) alongside of -aidilis-, -cepit-, -quei-, -hic-. Rhotacism is
already carried out completely; we find -duonoro-(= -bonorum-),
-ploirume-, not as in the chant of the Salii -foedesum-, -plusima-.
Our surviving inscriptions do not in general precede the age of
rhotacism; of the older -s only isolated traces occur, such as
afterwards -honos-, -labos- alongside of -honor-, -labor-; and the
similar feminine -praenomina-, -Maio- (= -maios- -maior-) and -Mino-
in recently found epitaphs at Praeneste.
27. -Litterator- and -grammaticus- are related nearly as elementary
teacher and teacher of languages with us; the latter designation
belonged by earlier usage only to the teacher of Greek, not to a
teacher of the mother-tongue. -Litteratus- is more recent, and
denotes not a schoolmaster but a man of culture.
28. It is at any rate a true Roman picture, which Plautus (Bacch. 431)
produces as a specimen of the good old mode of training children:--
... -ubi revenisses domum,
Cincticulo praecinctus in sella apud magistrum adsideres;
Si, librum cum legeres, unam peccavisses syllabam,
Fieret corium tam maculosum, quam est nutricis pallium-.
29. I. XIV. The Oldest Italo-Greek Calendar
30. I. XIV. The Oldest Italo-Greek Calendar
31. I. XV. Plastic Art in Italy
32. II. VIII. Building
33. II. VIII. Building
34. I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences
35. I. VII. Servian Wall
36. I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences
37. The round temple certainly was not, as has been supposed, an
imitation of the oldest form of the house; on the contrary, house
architecture uniformly starts from the square form. The later Roman
theology associated this round form with the idea of the terrestrial
sphere or of the universe surrounding like a sphere the central sun
(Fest. v. -rutundam-, p. 282; Plutarch, Num. 11; Ovid, Fast. vi. 267,
seq.). In reality it may be traceable simply to the fact, that the
circular shape has constantly been recognized as the most convenient
and the safest form of a space destined for enclosure and custody.
That was the rationale of the round --thesauroi-- of the Greeks as
well as of the round structure of the Roman store-chamber or temple of
the Penates. It was natural, also, that the fireplace--that is, the
altar of Vesta--and the fire-chamber--that is, the temple of Vesta
--should be constructed of a round form, just as was done with the
cistern and the well-enclosure (-puteal-). The round style of building
in itself was Graeco-Italian as was the square form, and the former
was appropriated to the store-place, the latter to the dwelling-house;
but the architectural and religious development of the simple -tholos-
into the round temple with pillars and columns was Latin.
38. I. XV. Plastic Art in Italy
39. II. V. Complete Submission of the Campanian and Volscian Provinces
40. I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods
41. Novius Plautius (II. VIII. Capital in Rome) cast perhaps only the
feet and the group on the lid; the casket itself may have proceeded
from an earlier artist, but hardly from any other than a Praenestine,
for the use of these caskets was substantially confined to Praeneste.
42. I. IX. Settlements of the Etruscans in Italy
43. I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences
44. I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform
TABLE OF CALENDAR EQUIVALENTS
A.U.C.* B.C. B.C. A.U.C.
------------------------------------------------------
000 753 753 000
025 728 750 003
050 703 725 028
075 678 700 053
100 653 675 078
125 628 650 103
150 603 625 128
175 578 600 153
200 553 575 178
225 528 550 203
250 503 525 228
275 478 500 253
300 453 475 278
325 428 450 303
350 303 425 328
375 378 400 353
400 353 375 378
425 328 350 403
450 303 325 428
475 278 300 453
500 253 275 478
525 228 250 503
550 203 225 528
575 178 200 553
600 153 175 578
625 128 150 603
650 103 125 628
675 078 100 653
700 053 075 678
725 028 050 703
750 003 025 728
753 000 000 753
*A. U. C. - Ab Urbe Condita (from the founding of the City of Rome)