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Second PUNIC War.

§ 62. The Condition of the ROMANS in the with the rest? "Yes," replied Fabius, "leave their angry gods to the Taren"tines; we will have nothing to do with "them." Spence.

Such was the state of this imperial city, when its citizens had made so great a pro

and sends all its Pictures and Statues to ROME

Marcellus had indeed behaved himself very differently in Sicily, a year or two be fore this happened. As he was to carry on the war in that province, he bent the whole force of it against Syracuse. There was at that time no one city which be longed to the Greeks, more elegant, or better adorned, than the city of Syracuse; it abounded in the works of the best masters. Marcellus, when he took the city, cleared it entirely, and sent all their statues and pictures to Rome. When I say all, I use the language of the people of Sy racuse; who soon after laid a complaint against Marcellus before the Roman se nate, in which they charged him with stripping all their houses and temples, and leaving nothing but bare walls throughout the city. Marcellus himself did not at all disown it, but fairly confessed what he had done: and used to declare that he had done so, in order to adorn Rome, and to introduce a taste for the fine arts among his countrymen.

gress in arms as to have conquered the $63. MARCELLUS attacks SYRACUSE, better part of Italy, and to be able to en gage in a war with the Carthaginians; the strongest power then by land, and the absolute masters by sea. The Romans, in the first Punic war, added Sicily to their dominions. In the second, they greatly increased their strength, both by sea and land; and acquired a taste of the arts and elegancies of life, with which till then they had been totally unacquainted. For though before this they were masters of Sicily (which in the old Roman geography made a part of Greece) and of several cities in the eastern parts of Italy, which were inhabited by colonies from Greece, and were adorned with the pictures, and statues, and other works, in which that nation delighted, and excelled the rest of the world so much; they had hitherto looked upon them with so careless an eye, that they had felt little or nothing of their beauty. This insensibility they preserved so long, either from the grossness of their minds, or perhaps from their superstition, and a dread of reverencing foreign deities as much as their own; or (which is the most likely of all) out of mere politics, and the desire of keeping up their martial spirit and natural roughness, which they thought the arts and elegancies of the Grecians would be but too apt to destroy. However that was, they generally preserved themselves from even the least suspicion of taste for the polite arts, pretty far into the second Punic war; as appears by the behaviour of Fabius Maximus in that war, even after the scales were turned on their side. When that general took Tarentum, he found it full of riches, and extremely adorned with pictures and statues. Among others, there were some very fine colossal figures of the gods, represented as fighting against the rebel giants. These were made by some of the most eminent masters in Greece; and the Jupiter, not improbably, by Lysippus. When Fabius was disposing of the spoil, he ordered the money and plate to be sent to the treasury at Rome, but the statues and pictures to be left behind. The secretary who attended him in his survey, was somewhat struck with the largeness and noble air of the figures just mentioned; and asked, Whether they too must be left

Such a difference of behaviour in their two greatest leaders, soon occasioned two different parties in Rome. The old people in general joined in crying up Fabius.

Fabius was not rapacious, as some others were; but temperate in his conquests. In what he had done, he had acted, not only with that moderation which becomes a Roman general, but with much prudence and foresight. "These fineries," they cried, "are a pretty diversion for an idle "effeminate people: let us leave them to "the Greeks. The Romans desire no "other ornaments of life, than a simpli "city of manners at home, and fortitude "against our enemies abroad. It is by "these arts that we have raised our name "so high, and spread our dominions so far: "and shall we suffer them now to be ex "changed for a fine taste, and what they

call elegance of living? No, great Ju"piter, who presidest over the capitol! let "the Greeks keep their arts to themselves, "and let the Romans learn only how to "conquer and to govern mankind."—Another set, and particularly the younger people, who were extremely delighted with

the

the noble works of the Grecian artists that had been set up for some time in the temples and porticos, and all the most public places of the city, and who used frequently to spend the greatest part of the day in contemplating the beauties of them, extolled Marcellus as much for the pleasure he had given them. "We shall now," said they, "no longer be reckoned among "the Barbarians. That rust, which we "have been so long contracting, will soon "be worn off. Other generals have conquered our enemies, but Marcellus has conquered our ignorance. We begin "to see with new eyes, and have a new "world of beauties opening before us. "Let the Romans be polite, as well as "victorious; and let us learn to excel the "nations in taste, as well as to conquer "them with our arms."

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Whichever side was in the right, the party for Marcellus was the successful one; for, from this point of time we may date the introduction of the arts into Rome. The Romans by this means began to be fond of them; and the love of the arts is a passion, which grows very fast in any breast wherever it is once entertained.

We may see how fast and how greatly it prevailed in Rome, by a speech which old Cato the censor made in the senate, not above seventeen years after the taking of Syracuse. He complains in it, that their people began to run into Greece and Asia; and to be infected with a desire of playing with their fine things: that as to such spoils, there was less honour in taking them, than there was danger of their being taken by them: that the gods brought from Syracuse, had revenged the cause of its citizens, in spreading this taste among the Romans: that he heard but too many daily crying up the ornaments of Corinth and Athens; and ridiculing the poor old Roman gods; who had hitherto been propitious to them: and who, he hoped, would still continue so, if they would but let their statues remain in peace upon their pedestals. Spence.

61. The ROMAN Generals, in their several Conquests, convey great Numbers of Pictures and Statues to ROME.

It was in vain too that Cato spoke against it; for the love of the arts prevailed every day more and more; and from henceforward the Roman generals, in their several conquests, seem to have strove who should bring away the greatest

number of statues and pictures, to set off their triumphs, and to adorn the city of Rome. It is surprising what accessions of this kind were made in the compass of a little more than half a century after Marcellus had set the example. The elder Scipio Africanus brought in a great number of wrought vases from Spain and Africa, toward the end of the second Punic war; and the very year after that was finished, the Romans entered into a war with Greece, the great school of all the arts, and the chief repository of most of the finest works that ever were produced by them. It would be endless to mention all their acquisitions from hence; I shall only put you in mind of some of the most considerable. Flaminius made a great shew both of statues and vases in his triumph over Philip king of Macedon; but he was much exceeded by Æmilius, who reduced that kingdom into a province. Æmilius's triumph lasted three days; the first of which was wholly taken up in bringing in the fine statues he had selected in his expedition; as the chief ornament of the second consisted of vases and sculptured vessels of all sorts, by the most eminent hands. These were all the most chosen things, culled from the collection of that successor of Alexander the Great; for as to the inferior spoils of no less than seventy Grecian cities, Æmilius had left them all to his soldiery, as not worthy to appear among the ornaments of his triumph. Not many years after this, the young Scipio Africanus (the person who is most celebrated for his polite taste of all the Romans hitherto, and who was scarce exceeded by any one of them in all the succeeding ages) destroyed Carthage, and transferred many of the chief ornaments of that city, which had so long bid fair for being the seat of empire, to Rome, which soon became undoubtedly so. This must have been a vast accession: though that great man, who was as just in his actions as he was elegant in his taste, did not bring all the finest of his spoils to Rome, but left a great part of them in Sicily, from whence they had formerly been taken by the Carthaginians. The very same year that Scipio freed Rome from its most dangerous rival, Carthage, Mummius (who was as remarkable for his rusticity, as Scipio was for elegance and taste) added Achaia to the Roman state; and sacked, among several others, the famous city of Corinth, which had been long looked upon as one of the principal

reservoirs

reservoirs of the finest works of art.

in all Sicily, which he did not see; nor any one he liked, which he did not take away from its owner. What he thus got, he sent into Italy. Rome was the centre both of their spoils in war, and of their rapines in peace and if many of their prætors and proconsuls acted but in half so abandoned a manner as this Verres appears to have done, it is very probable that Rome was more enriched in all these sort of things secretly by their governors, than it had been openly by their generals. Spence.

He cleared it of all its beauties, without knowing any thing of them: even without know ing, that an old Grecian state was better than a new Roman one. He used, how ever, the surest method of not being mistaken; for he took all indifferently as they came in his way: and brought them off in such quantities, that he alone is said to have filled Rome with statues and pictures. Thus, partly from the taste, and partly from the vanity of their generals, in less than seventy years' time (reckoning from Marcellus's taking of Syracuse to the year in $ which Carthage was destroyed) Italy was furnished with the noblest productions of the ancient artists, that before lay scattered all over Spain, Africa, Sicily, and the rest of Greece. Sylla, beside many others, added vastly to them afterwards; particularly by his taking of Athens, and by his conquests in Asia; where by his too great indulgence to his armies, he made taste and rapine a general thing, even among the common soldiers, as it had been for a long time, among their leaders.

In this manner, the first considerable acquisitions were made by their conquering armies; and they were carried on by the persons sent out to govern their provinces, when conquered. As the behaviour of these in their governments, in general, was one of the greatest blots on the Roman nation, we must not expect a full account of their transactions in the old historians, who treat particularly of the Roman affairs; for such of these that remain to us, are either Romans themselves, or else Greeks who were too much attached to the Roman interest, to speak out the whole truth in this affair. But what we cannot have fully from their own historians, may be pretty well supplied from other hands. A poet of their own, who seems to have been a very honest man, has set the rapaciousness of their governors in general in a very strong light; as Cicero hath set forth that of Verres in particular, as strongly. If we may judge of their general behaviour by that of this governor of Sicily, they were more like monsters and harpies, than men. For that public robber as Cicero calls him, more than once) hunted over every corner of his island, with a couple of finders (one a Greek painter, and the other a statuary of the same nation) to get together his collection; and was so curious and so rapacious in that search, that Cicero says, there was not a gem, or statue, or relievo, or picture,

65. The Methods made use of in drawing the Works of the best ancient Artists into ITALY.

There was another method of augmenting these treasures at Rome not so infamous as this, and not so glorious as the former. What I mean was the custom of the Ediles, when they exhibited their public games, of adorning the theatres and other places where they were performed, with great numbers of statues and pictures, which they bought up or borrowed, for that purpose, all over Greece, and sometimes even from Asia. Scaurus, in parti. cular, in his ædileship, had no less than three thousand statues and relievos for the mere ornamenting of the stage, in a theatre built only for four or five days. This was the same Scaurus who (whilst he was in the same office too) brought to Rome all the pictures of Sicyon, which had been so long one of the most eminent schools in Greece for painting; in lieu of debts owing, or pretended to be owed, from that city to the Roman people.

From these public methods of drawing the works of the best ancient artists into Italy, it grew at length to be a part of private luxury, affected by almost every body that could afford it, to adorn their houses, their porticos, and their gardens, with the best statues and pictures they could procure out of Greece or Asia. None went earlier into this taste, than the family of the Luculli, and particularly Lucius Lucullus, who carried on the war against Mithri dates. He was remarkable for his love of the arts and polite learning even from a child; and in the latter part of his life gave himself up so much to collections of this kind, that Plutarch reckons it among his follies. "As I am speaking of his faults (says that historian in his life) I should not omit his vast baths, and piazzas for walking; or his gardens, which were much more magnificent than any in his time

at Rome, and equal to any in the luxurious ages that followed: nor his excessive fondness for statues and pictures, which he got from all parts, to adorn his works and gardens, at an immense expense; and with the vast riches he had heaped together in the Mithridatic war." There were several other families which fell about that time into the same sort of excess; and, among the rest, the Julian. The first emperor, who was of that family, was a great collector; and, in particular, was as fond of old gems, as his successor, Augustus, was of Corinthian vasės.

streets with an addition of some of the finest statues in the world. Spence.

This may be called the first age of the flourishing of the politer arts at Rome; or rather the age in which they were introduced there for the people in this period were chiefly taken up in getting fine things, and bringing them together. There were perhaps some particular persons in it of a very good taste: but in general one may say, there was rather a love, than any great knowledge of their beauties, during this age, among the Romans. They were brought to Rome in the first part of it, in greater numbers than can be easily conceived; and in some time, every body began to look upon them with pleasure. The collection was continually augmenting afterwards, from the several methods I have mentioned and I doubt not but a good taste would have been a general thing among them much earlier than it was, had it not been for the frequent convulsions in their state, and the perpetual struggles of some great man or other to get the reins of government into his hands. These continued quite from Sylla's time to the establishment of the state under Augustus. The peaceful times that then succeeded, and the encouragement which was given by that emperor to all the arts, afforded the Romans full leisure to contemplate the fiae works that were got together at Rome in the age before, and to perfect their taste in all the elegancies of life. The artists, who were then much invited to Rome, worked in a style greatly superior to what they had done even in Julius Cæsar's time: so that it is under Augustus that we may begin the second, and most perfect age of sculpture and painting, as well as of poetry. Augustus changed the whole appearance of Rome itself; he found it ill built, and left it a city of marble. He adorned it with buildings, extremely finer than any it could boast before his time, and set off all those buildings, and even the common

66. On the Decline of the Arts, Eloquence, and Poetry, upon the Death of Augustus.

On the death of Augustus, though the arts, and the taste for them, did not suffer so great a change, as appeared immediately in the taste of eloquence and poetry, yet they must have suffered a good deal. There is a secret union, a certain kind of sympathy between all the polite arts, which makes them languish and flourish together. The same circumstances are either kind or unfriendly to all of them. The favour of Augustus, and the tranquillity of his reign, was as a gentle dew from heaven, in a favourable season, that made them bud forth and flourish: and the sour reign of Tiberius, was as a sudden frost that checked their growth, and at last killed all their beauties. The vanity, and tyranny, and disturbances of the times that followed, gave the finishing stroke to sculpture as well as eloquence, and to painting as well as poetry. The Greek artists at Rome were not so soon or so much infected by the bad taste of the court, as the Roman writers were: but it reached them too, though by slower and more imperceptible degrees. Indeed what else could be expected from such a run of monsters as Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero? For these were the emperors under whose reigns the arts began to languish; and they suffered so much from their baleful influence, that the Roman writers soon after them speak of all the arts as being brought to a very low ebb. They talk of their being extremely fallen in general; and as to painting, in parti cular, they represent it as in a most feeble and dying condition. The series of so many good emperors, which happened after Domitian, gave some spirit again to the arts; but soon after the Antonines, they all declined apace, and, by the time of the thirty tyrants, were quite fallen, so as never to rise again under any future Roman emperor.

You may see by these two accounts I have given you of the Roman poetry, and of the other arts, that the great periods of their rise, their flourishing, and their decline, agree very well; and as it were, tally with one another. Their style was prepared, and a vast collection of fine works laid in, under the first period, or in

the

the times of the republic; in the second, or the Augustan age, their writers and artists were both in their highest perfection; and in the third, from Tiberius to the Antonines, they both began to languish; and then revived a little; and at last sunk totally together.

In comparing the descriptions of their poets with the works of art, I should there. fore chuse to omit all the Roman poets after the Antonines. Among them all, there is perhaps no one whose omission need be regretted, except that of Claudian; and even as to him it may be considered, that he wrote when the true knowledge of the arts was no more; and when the true taste of poetry was strangely corrupted and lost; even if we were to judge of it by his own writings only, which are extremely better than any of the poets long before and long after him. It is therefore much better to confine one's self to the three great ages, than to run so far out of one's way single poet or two whose authorities, after all, must be very disputable, and indeed scarce of any weight. Spence. On DEMOSTHENES. 6 67.

up

for a

orator a finer field than Demosthenes in his
Olynthiacs and Philippics, which are his
capital orations; and, no doubt, to the no-
bleness of the subject, and to that integrity
and public spirit which eminently breathe
in them, they are indebted for much of
their merit. The subject is, to rouse the
indignation of his countrymen against Phi-
lip of Macedon, the public enemy of the
liberties of Greece; and to guard them
against the insidious measures, by which
that crafty prince endeavoured to lay them
asleep to danger. In the prosecution of
this end, we see him taking every proper
method to animate a people, renowned for
justice, humanity and valour, but in many
instances become corrupt and degenerate.
He boldly taxes them with their venality,
their indolence, and indifference to the
public cause; while at the same time, with
all the art of an orator, he recalls the
glory of their ancestors to their thoughts,
shews them that they are still a flourishing
and a powerful people, the natural protec-
tors of the liberty of Greece, and who
wanted only the inclination to exert them-
selves, in order to make Philip tremble.
With his cotemporary orators, who were
in Philip's interest, and who persuaded the
people to peace, he keeps no measures,
but plainly reproaches them as the betray-
ers of their country. He not only prompts
to vigorous conduct, but he lays down the
plan of that conduct; he enters into par-
ticulars; and points out, with great ex-
actness, the measures of execution. This

I shall not spend any time upon the circumstances of Demosthenes's life; they are well known. The strong ambition which he discovered to excel in the art of speaking; the unsuccessfulness of his first attempts; his unwearied perseverance in surmounting all the disadvantages that arose from his person and address; his shutting himself in a cave, that he might study is the strain of these orations. They are with less distraction; his declaiming by the sea-shore, that he might accustom himself strongly animated; and full of the impeto the noise of a tumultuous assembly, and tuosity and fire of public spirit. They proceed in a continued strain of inductions, with pebbles in his mouth, that he might consequences, and demonstrations, foundcorrect a defect in his speech; his practised on sound reason. The figures which ing at home with a naked sword hanging he uses, are never sought after; but al ways rise from the subject. He employs them sparingly indeed; for splendour and ornament are not the distinctions of this

over his shoulder, that he might check an
ungraceful motion, to which he was sub-
ject; all those circumstances, which we
learn from Plutarch, are very encouraging
to such as study Eloquence, as they show
how far art and application may avail, for
acquiring an excellence which nature seem-
ed unwilling to grant us.
$68. DEMOSTHENES imitated the manly

Eloquence of PERICLES.

Blair.

Despising the affected and florid manner which the rhetoricians of that age followed, Demosthenes returned to the forcible and manly eloquence of Pericles; and strength and vehemence form the principal characteristics of his Style. Never had

orator's composition. It is an energy thought, peculiar to himself, which forms his character, and sets him above all others. He appears to attend much more to things than to words. We forget the orator, and think of the business. He warms the mind, and impels to action. He has no parade and ostentation; no methods of insinuation; no laboured introductions; but is like a man full of his subject, who, after preparing his audience, by a sentence or two, for hearing plain truths, enters directly on business.

Ibid.

$69.

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