Greco-Roman

“ This little touch [Pg 99] of art throws a gleam of inner light on the struggle towards originality and truth which characterized the Greek principles of beauty and fitness in literature and art, in direct contrast to that which was always turning back to those fossil forms which were only respectable on account of their age and their mystery, but of which the tradition and intention were already lost.
Roman patterns were merely Greek adaptations with an Etruscan flavour, which was a survival of the earliest Italian art. ”

“ There is, perhaps, nothing in the history of human intelligence to compare with the dazzling 'swiftness of its development or the rapidity of its decline. War was followed by pillage and devastation, and victorious Roman generals, mere depredators and plunderers, crowded Rome with the stolen treasures of Greece, with the result that Greek art and Greek influence soon made themselves felt in-the imperial city, and for generations its artists were almost exclusively Greeks, chiefly portrait painters and decorators. ”

“ Without it, we may doubt if the work of the Greeks would have been saved for us when the storms from the north, invasions of barbarian peoples, fell at last upon the sunny lands filled with the spirit of Greek thought and the divine works of Greek artists. To Roman discipline, law, and government, we owe not only much that even now is every day of practical benefit to us, but the preservation of what we still possess of the treasures of Hellenic genius. ”

“ In science and philosophy none to compare with Aristotle and Plato.
And in the arts, all the finest sculpture and architecture in Rome is known to have been copied from the Greeks. Where are the Roman names to put with those of Phidias and Praxiteles?
Everywhere, throughout the world, if a great literary work or a great artistic work was done, it was done either by a Greek or by some one of another race who had learnt from the Greeks. If Rome had conquered and possessed the world by her arms, Greece had conquered and possessed it by her thought. ”

“ The good, if there was any good, that Roman dominion brought the world at that period was the spreading of Greek culture across the western half of the world. As Rome mastered the Greek states one by one, their genius won a subtler triumph over the conqueror. Her generals recognized and admired a culture superior to their own. They carried off the statues of Greece for the adornment of their villas, and with equal eagerness they appropriated her manners and her thought, her literature and her gods. ”

“ The dignity and value of the Greeks from that time forward belong to them only as individual philosophers, preceptors, astronomers, and mathematicians, literary men and critics, medical practitioners, etc. In all these respective capacities, especially in the great schools of philosophical speculation they still constitute the light of the Roman world; though, as communities, they have lost their own orbit, and have become satellites of more powerful neighbors. ”

“ The citizens of this great state, which was to include, not only Greece and the Levant, but the whole Mediterranean and lands far beyond its shores, were to be proud of the name of Roman. Yet Rome, destined to be the Mistress of the World, and in political power an empire, succeeding where Greece {409} had failed, owed all that was most worth while in the things of the higher intellectual life of the mind to Greece. The Greek spirit was never to die. ”

“ In these provinces they were copyists of the Greeks: they lacked ideality. They had, also, far less delicacy of perception, flexibility, and native refinement of manners. But they had more sobriety of character and more endurance. They were a disciplined people; and in their capacity for discipline lay the secret of their supremacy in arms and of their ability to give law to the world. If they produced a much less number of great men than the Greeks, there was more widely diffused among Roman citizens a conscious dignity and strength. ”

“ From this time forth not only were Greek philosophers of eminence drawn to live themselves at Rome, and so to meet her statesmen and nobles in habits of intercourse, but the higher classes of the great capital commonly completed their education by visiting and studying at Athens, Rhodes, and other centres of Grecian thought. Thus by the fusion of Greece with the empire, while her political importance dwindled away, her influence upon the mind of her subjugators was immensely increased. But the Roman on his side obtained a sort of victory. ”

“ It is now proposed briefly to relate how this line was lost, when the politeness and philosophy, the literature and the Art of Greece were chained to the triumphal cars of Roman conquerors,—and how it seems to have been found again in our own day, after slumbering so long in ruined temples, broken statues, and cinerary urns.
The scholar who studies the aesthetical anatomy of Greek Art has a melancholy pleasure, like a surgeon, in watching its slow, but inevitable atrophy under the incubus of Rome. ”

“ Relation of Roman to Greek Literature: the Poets of the Republican Era.—Latin literature was almost wholly imitative or borrowed, being a reproduction of Greek models; still it performed a most important service for civilization: it was the medium for the dissemination throughout the world of the rich literary treasures of Greece.
It was the dramatic productions of the Greeks which were first studied and copied at Rome. Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius, Plautus, and Terence, all of whom wrote under the republic, are the most noted of the Roman dramatists. ”

“ Everything we have of their [Pg 36] art shows their imitation of Grecian models. Their embroideries would certainly have shown the same impress.
Greece—herself crushed and demoralized—even as late as the Eastern Empire gave to Rome the fashion of the Byzantine taste, which she at once adopted, and it was called the Romanesque. This style, which was partly Arab, still prevails in Eastern Europe, having clung to the Greek Church. In her best days, Roman poetry, architecture, and decorative arts were Greek of Greece, imitating its highest types, but never creating. ”

“ A Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, who may be called the father of Roman classical literature, translating the Odyssey into Saturnian verse, introduced his captors to the literary treasures of his country. Enraptured Rome eagerly snatched the crown of letters as it fell from the head of her elder sister, and for a time the borrowed jewels sparkled on her brow. But she paid dearly for her brilliant ornaments; for, with Greek taste and culture, came also Greek effeminacy and vice. ”

“ There they introduced the Greek language, as well as the religion, literature, and art of their native land. Roman nobles of the better type began to take an interest in other things than simply farming, commerce, or war. They imitated Greek fashions in dress and manners, collected Greek books, and filled their homes with the productions of Greek artists. Henceforth every aspect of Roman society felt the quickening influence of the older, richer culture of the Hellenic world. It was a Roman poet who wrote, "Captive Greece captured her conqueror rude." ”

“ But out of the suggestions and reminiscences of Greek lines they made a rigid and inflexible grammar of their own,—a grammar to suit the mailed clang of Roman speech, which, in its cruel martial strength, sought no refinements, no delicate inflections from a distant Acropolis. The result was the coarse splendor of the Empire. How utterly the still Greek Ideal was forgotten in this noisy splendor, how entirely the chaste spirituality of the Greek line was lost in the round and lusty curves which are the inevitable footprints of Sensual Life, scarcely needs further amplification. ”

“ The work of Greece is far beyond the furthest reach of Roman work—the glad spring, the grace of conscious strength that is beautiful as well as strong, the restfulness withal of perfect harmony that is thinking of more than merely utilitarian values; of these Rome knows not the secret. Beside the flight of Greek art she is pedestrian; to the Greek artist she plays at best but the part of Roman artisan. Forceful, massive, successful up to its highest desire, the Roman work is finished and perfect. ”

“ Phidias, being asked how he conceived the idea of his Olympian Jupiter, answered by repeating a passage of Homer. We can scarcely conceive of the enthusiasm which the Greeks exhibited in the cultivation of art. Hence it has obtained an ascendency over that of all other nations. Roman art was the continuation of the Grecian. The Romans appreciated and rewarded Grecian artists. They adopted their architecture, their sculpture, and their paintings; and, though art never attained the estimation and dignity in Rome that it did in Greece, it still can boast of a great development. ”

“ In the days when Paul preached at Athens, the old capital of Greece, much of the ancient splendour and power of the Greek people had passed away, for the Romans had conquered their country, and they were no longer a free nation.
Yet, although the Greeks had been forced to yield to Rome, their conquerors knew that the Grecian scholars and artists were far better educated and more highly gifted than themselves, and Greek statues and writings had therefore become the fashion throughout the Roman Empire. Indeed, many of the Greek sculptors and authors are remembered and admired to this day. ”

“ Throughout the eastern half of the Mediterranean countries, conquering Rome had been face to face with an older, a more polished, a more keenly intellectual, and more artistic culture than her own. This was the civilisation of Greece. We need not dwell upon the character of Hellenic culture. Anyone who has made acquaintance with the richness of Greek literature, the clear sureness of Greek art, the keen insight of Greek science and philosophy, and the bold experiments of Greek society—especially as represented by Athens—will understand at once what is meant. ”

“ The Greek race, suffering a long occultation under the blaze of the Roman empire, into which for a time it had been absorbed, but again emerging from this blaze and reassuming a distinct Greek agency and influence, offers a subject great by its own inherent attractions, and separately interesting by the unaccountable neglect which it has suffered. ”

“ It is a singular fact that the Greek and the Roman, in spite of their great intellectual acuteness, accomplished so little in the penetration of Nature's secrets. With the strong love of the beautiful that distinguished the one, and the profound sense of law that marked the other, one would have supposed that they would have felt more the charm and loveliness of the outward world, and have taken a greater interest in discovering its unchangeable ordinances. ”

“ The Graeco-Roman period in the literature of Hellenism may be dated from the Roman subjugation of Greece. “Greece made a captive of the rough conqueror,” but it did not follow from this intellectual conquest that Athens became once more the intellectual centre of the world. The Graeco-Roman period.Under the empire, indeed, the university of Athens long enjoyed a pre-eminent reputation. But Rome gradually became the point to which the greatest workers in every kind were drawn. ”

“ The difference can be felt instinctively in the merest fragment of a broken figure. It is not difficult to tell Greek from Roman fragments, they pulsate with a life that it is impossible to describe but that one instinctively feels. And this vitality depends, I think it will be found, on the greater amount of life-giving variety in the surfaces of the modelling. In their architectural mouldings, the difference of which we are speaking can be more easily traced. 134The vivacity and brilliancy of a Greek moulding makes a Roman work look heavy and dull. ”

“ Many influences had been at work to blur the clean-cut outlines of Hellenic imagination, and to sophisticate the ancestral faith both of Greece and Rome. Men wished to believe in the ancient gods, but they were no longer the gods of Homer or of Aeschylus, the gods worshipped by the men who fought [pg 459] in the Samnite or the Punic wars. Greek philosophy for eight centuries had been teaching a doctrine of one Divine force or essence, transcending the powers and limitations of sense, or immanent in the fleeting world of chance and change. ”

“ But the efforts of the Senate to safeguard these oracles only prove that the older and wiser men in the community realised how dangerous they were, and the comparison with Greece leads to a consideration of certain essential differences between the Greek and the Roman temperament which made that which was meat for one into poison for the other. [Pg 69]
In the older purer age of Greece the gods were never far away from men, they lived almost side by side with them ”

“ The Greeks, at that period, were the noblest race of the ancient world—immortal for genius and art. But power dazzled them, and little remained of that glorious spirit which was seen at Thermopylae and Marathon. The Greek ascendency in Asia and Egypt was followed by the same luxury and extravagance and effeminacy that resulted from the rule of Persia. The Greeks had done great things, and contributed to the march of civilization, but they had done their work, and their turn of humiliation must come. Their vast empire fell into the hands of the Romans, and the change was beneficial to humanity. ”