Century (Roman)

“ It may be noted that the twelfth century produced the finest writing ever known—a large, free and flowing form of the minuscule of Tours. In the next century comes in the angular Gothic hand, the difference between which and the twelfth century hand may be fairly understood by a comparison of ordinary German and Roman type. In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the writing of each century may be discerned, while the general tendency is towards complication, use of abbreviations and contractions, and development of unessential parasitic forms of letters. ”

“ The difference appears very great if the eighteenth century, so incapable of escaping from itself, be compared with our own time, which enjoys alike Greek and Roman art, now better understood, Byzantine, mediæval, Arabic and Renaissance art, the art of the Cinquecento, baroque art, and the art of the eighteenth century. ”

“ In the second century of the christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth and the most civilized portion of mankind. ”

“ Consider what a body of written matter there must have been to instruct and maintain the technical excellence of Roman work. What a mass of books on engineering and on ship-building and on road-making; what quantities of tables and ready-reckoners, all that civilization must have produced and depended upon. Time has preserved much verse, and not only the best by any means, more prose, particularly the theological prose of the end of the Roman time. ”

“ How did the reverence of Europe settle at one time on the sword of Edward the Third, and at another on the periwig of Louis the Fourteenth? These and similar inquiries will lead us to the real principles and motive forces of a particular age, as they distinguished it from other ages. We shall label the centuries, as it were, with their characteristic marks, and know where to look for thoughts and incidents of a particular class and type.
Let us look at the first century.
Throughout the civilized world there is nothing but Rome. ”

“ If any one, then, contemplates the Roman people as he would contenplate a man, and considers its whole age, how it had its origin, how it grew up, how it arrived at a certain vigour of manhood, and how it has since, as it were, grown old, he will observe four degrees and stages of its existence. ”

“ An era is a fixed point of time from which a series of years is reckoned. Among the nations of the Earth there are no less than twenty-five different eras; but the most of them are not of enough importance to be mentioned here. Attention is particularly called to the Roman era which commenced with the building of the city of Rome 753 years before Christ. ”

“ Though drawing from the provinces, Rome remains the centre of the literary movement. The characteristics of the great writers are essentially national, not provincial nor Characteristics of post-Augustan age. cosmopolitan. In prose the old forms—oratory, history, the epistle, treatises or dialogues on ethical and literary questions—continue to be cultivated. Scientific and practical subjects, such as natural history, architecture, medicine, agriculture, are treated in more elaborate literary style. The old Roman satura is developed into something like the modern prose novel. ”

“ It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that the decadence of the Roman Empire is being repeated in our time in the modern world.
This assertion may seem paradoxical and strange. What! are we moderns on the downward grade? Why, one hears of nothing but progress on every side. Never was there an epoch more proud of its loudly vaunted achievements. The sciences are adding discovery to discovery. The wealth of the world is increasing with giddy rapidity. Comfort and culture are spreading in every class and in every country. ”

“ It seems to me that the chief reason for the eternal fascination of the history of Rome is this, that it includes, as in a miniature drawn with simple lines, well defined, all the essential phenomena of social life; so that every age is able there to find its own image, its gravest problems, its intensest passions, its most pressing interests, its keenest struggles; therefore Roman history is forever modern, because every new age has only to choose that part which most resembles it, to find its own self. ”

“ The accomplishment will become always more and more arduous; for Roman studies, feeling the new generations becoming estranged from them, have for the last twenty-five years tended to take refuge in the tranquil cloisters of learning, of archaeology, in the discreet concourse of a few wise men, who voluntarily flee the noises of the world, Fatal thought! ”

“ It can only be acquired by familiarity with those written monuments, which are at once the flowers and conservatories of the idioms, in which they breathe a life immortal. Of these the Romans have left us many of imperishable excellence, to which we must ever point as the most perfect exponents of their language, as the armories of the Roman mind. And these are yet to add wholesome vigor to the intellect of youth, and consolation to the failing strength of age. ”

“ It remains to say a few words in regard to the historical progress of this branch of literature. The history of Roman poetry may be divided into four great periods:—
I. The age of Naevius, Ennius, Lucilius, etc., extending from about b.c. 240 till about b.c. 100:
II. The age of Lucretius and Catullus, whose active poetical [page 24] career belongs to the last age of the Republic, the decennium before the outbreak of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey:
III. The Augustan age:
IV. The whole period of the Empire after the time of Augustus. ”

“ In art, in literature, in philosophy, in laws, in the mechanism of government, in the cultivated face of nature, in military strength, in aesthetic culture, the Romans were our equals. And this high civilization was reached by the native and unaided strength of man; by the power of will, by courage, by perseverance, by genius, by fortunate circumstances; by great men, gifted with unusual talents. We are filled with admiration by all these trophies of genius, and cannot but feel that only a superior race could have accomplished such mighty triumphs. ”

“ One of the features that makes the study of the Renaissance so fascinating is that in that age the stream of personal record, which had been driven underground, its course choked and hidden beneath the fallen masonry of the Roman Empire, emerges again unimpeded and flows in ever-increasing volume. ”

“ To which I may add, as another example of that tentative, that appealing twitch of the garment of Roman association of which one kept renewing one's consciousness, the half-hour at the little foundry itself was all charming--with its quite shabby and belittered and ramshackle recall of the old Roman "art-life" of one's early dreams. ”

“ Thus underneath the Roman tyrant’s yoke
A nation lives and who shall still its voice?
Before this wall, the ices are released,
We are, we live, we breathe and feel again,
Once more we are a Nation; ’tis this that really counts. ”

“ To a spectator on the spot, it is remarkable that the events of Roman history, and Roman life itself, appear not so distant as the Gothic ages which succeeded them. We stand in the Forum, or on the height of the Capitol, and seem to see the Roman epoch close at hand. We forget that a chasm extends between it and ourselves, in which lie all those dark, rude, unlettered centuries, around the birth time of Christianity, as well as the age of chivalry and romance, the feudal system, and the infancy of a better civilization than that of Rome. ”

“ With a natural gift for words, for expression, it will be his literary function to draw back the veil of time from the true greatness of old Roman character; the veil of modern habit from the primitive energy of the creatures of his fancy, as the Lettres à une Inconnue discovered to general gaze, after his death, a certain depth of [15] passionate force which had surprised him in himself. ”

“ Too many people still think that the Middle Ages are merely a stagnant pit which lies between the heights of classical and of Renaissance civilization, and that all our legacy from the past was carried over the bridges which Renaissance thinkers threw across the medieval pit to the firm ground of Graeco-Roman learning. ”

“ And the succession of years from that year 1 is called the Christian era. To get the numbers of its years you have only to subtract 753 from the years in the Roman numbering."
"If we add 753," said Joe, "to 1880, will we get the number of years since old Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus?"
"Yes," said the Professor; "the rule works both ways. There is, however, some uncertainty as to whether the Romans themselves were correct in regard to the age of their city. Very early dates are hard to settle."
"Where did the months get their names?" ”

“ Such are the discoveries of modern philosophy, as to the causes of the decline and ultimate fall of the Roman empire, gleaned from a few facts, accidentally preserved by the ancient writers, apparently unconscious of their value! It is a noble science which, in so short a time, has presented such a gift to mankind. ”

“ It shows that Roman civilisation advanced without this vivifying influence,—that the mind of the race early reached the maturity of manhood, without passing through the dreams of childhood or the buoyant fancies of youth. ”

“ An historical novel is great,—when it is great,—because, in its study of the life of the past, it displays the same qualities that give value to the life of today. The true test of greatness in an historical novel may be defined at once, as the test of its success in portraying the past with realistic effect.
With this test in mind, I have reviewed all novels of Roman life which a most thorough search has brought to light, asking the question: What degree of success do they attain in portraying the life of Rome with realistic effect? ”

“ The great intellectual revolution which has been named the Renaissance was at first a return to Greek and Roman antiquity. Literary men and scholars, filled with adoration for a glorious past, abandoned their mother tongue for that of the great dead, imitated Virgil, Cicero, Demosthenes, swore by Jupiter and Mercury, insisted, like Montaigne, on being given the title of Roman citizens, or like Erasmus, Ramus, or Melanchthon, took neo-classical names. ”

“ The poets with whom our enquiry is concerned, and especially the two most illustrious of their number, thoroughly represent, as they helped to call forth, the spirit in which the Roman world passed through the great change from the Republic to the Empire. They give expression to the weariness and longing for rest, to the revival of Roman and Italian feeling, to the pride of empire, the charm of ancient memories and associations, the aspiration after a better life and a firmer faith. ”

“ So said the old Roman, some thousand years ago, and doubtless what he said was true, both in his own day, when men cultivated a firm, fixed spirit within them, and also in the present, in the case of some individuals, to whom has descended the gem-like hardness of the antique mind, on which lines, once engraved, are never to be effaced. ”

“ And the Roman plays appear definitely Roman only because the strength of Rome was the eternal strength of the world,—pure family life, sustained by agriculture, and defended by simple and fearless manhood. ”

“ The collision of minds fraught with learning, in that high state of excitement which the genius of the place produced on the coldest imaginations, together with those innumerable brilliant and transitory topics which were never elicited in any other city, made the Roman conversations a continual exercise of the understanding. The details of political intrigue, and the follies of individuals, excited but little interest among the strangers in Rome. ”

“ Thus the line of the novel of Roman life as written by scholarly preachers has been found to branch off, at a certain point, into the line of the story of religious instruction, a form which was excluded by definition in Section I of this study. The line of the “popular” novel of Roman life has always had a tendency to branch off, and deteriorate into cheap imitations, which attempt to use Roman life to provide artificial coloring, but do not really portray Roman life at all. ”

“ I have said in a previous article that the general unity of character prevailing throughout these three divisions, so that, taken from the broadest point of view, each one seems a unit in time, justifies the application to them of that term, Age, by which we distinguish in human history those periods marked throughout by one prevailing tendency;—as we say the age of Egyptian or Greek or Roman civilization,—the age of stone or iron or bronze. ”

“ Though we have seen the work of the Græco-Romans bearing evidence of combined influence and instruction, there was even at that very epoch a school, or powerful class of artists, in Rome, who retained their own individuality, who were Romans of Rome, and from whose hands, and from their successors, we have inherited grand cameos and intaglios, portraying their emperors, statesmen, philosophers, mythological subjects, and occasionally groups recording important events in Roman history. ”

“ If other histories can grow old, it is indeed the more needful, exactly because it serves to educate new generations, to reanimate Roman history, incorporating in it the new facts constantly discovered by archæological effort, infusing it with a larger and stronger philosophical spirit, carrying into it the matured experience of the world, which learns not only by studying but also by living. ”