288
STATE OF THE ARTS.
The art of making historical bas-reliefs, either separately or in.
series around pillars, had reached its height under Trajan, and
continued to flourish under the Antonines, in whose reign some
bas-reliefs were produced, which are excellent both in their
conception and execution. I know of only one bas-relief be-
longing to the time of Antoninus Pius, in which, however, the
decay of the art is quite manifest. Under M. Aurelius this art
rose again. Architecture too was, in a certain way, at its
height in the reign of Trajan; but under Hadrian it sank;
for he had a corrupt taste, and patronised a corrupt style. The
busts of M. Aurelius, and especially his magnificent equestrian
statue in bronze, are of exquisite beauty. If the horse appears
less so, it is merely because it belongs to a race which we do
not consider beautiful, but it is nevertheless a work of great
life and spirit. It must be acknowledged, that in the reign of
M-Aurelius art in general had again risen very high; but this
was its last revival. Even from the time of Trajan, art is
only historical, and there is no subsequent monument of the
plastic art of an ideal kind. Painting was completely at an
end, as is expressly stated by Petronius: it had been decaying
in the same proportion as mosaic had risen in favour, and the
few paintings of that period still extant are horribly bad. We
still possess some very beautiful busts of the time of Septimius
Severus and Caracalla, and in the reign of the former beautiful
statues also were produced ; but the bas-reliefs on the triumphal
arch of Severus are very bad, and those on the small arch of
Severus, which the argentarii erected to him, are quite bar-
barous in their design. The revolution which then took place
in art is very remarkable: the artistic eye, the taste, the sense
of proportion, as well as technical skill, seem to have been lost
all at once. After the time of Caracalla, we scarcely find one
good bust, though they may have been good likenesses; all
that are extant are barbarous, and have mis-shaped heads. The
figures on coins too grow worse and worse.
Before I drew attention to the state of literature in the
third century, people usually considered Roman literature as
perfectly barbarous, even as early as the beginning of that
century.9 The height as well as the end of juristical
9 See Niebuhr, “ Zwei Klassische Lateinische Schriftsteller des dritten
Jahrhunderts nach Christas,” in his Kleine Hιstoτ. und Philol. Schriften,
i. p. 305, foil.
STATE OF LITERATURE.
289
literature falls in the first half of the third century, the period of
Papinian and Ulpian1 both of whom, diversis υirtutibus, were
men of the highest eminence in their department, and among
thousands of others scarcely one can he placed by their side.
Both are excellent also in their style; and if there are some
trifling mistakes in the language, yet the plastic nature of
their style is so thoroughly Roman that a modern jurist who
is unable to think and write in Latin on his science has no
excuse. With regard to Papinian and Ulpian every jurist
ought to follow the precept which Horace gives in regard to
the Greeks — nocturna versate manu, ver sate diurna. In the
same manner as jurisprudence died away after their time, so
had the great Attic oratory disappeared after the time of
Demosthenes, and so also were Thucydides in Greece and
Tacitus at Rome the last great historians. A considerable
time afterwards there followed Hermogenianus and others,
who were compilers. The scientific study of law was super-
seded more and more by the legislation of the imperial secre-
taries, whose laws were drawn up in an abominably bombastic
style, which we may be thankful is somewhat curtailed in the
Codex. If we look at the other branches of literature we first
meet with Q. Curtius, for I am perfectly convinced that he
lived in. the time of Septimius Severus and Caracalla. In him
we have an author who wrote an artificial language, that is,
the language of Livy. The ingenious but obscene Petronius
(who mentions Mamaea) lived somewhat later, under Alexander
Severus, or perhaps even in the reign of Gordian. The excel-
lent scholar Hadrian Valesius was the first who drew attention
to the age of Petronius; the prelate Stcphano Gradiat first pas-
sionately opposed the new theory, but afterwards gave a noble
example of honesty by abandoning his opinion and completing
the argument of his opponent. I have added some points
which had been overlooked by those scholars, such as the
passage about Mamaea, and a sepulchral inscription of the
reign of Alexander Severus, which clearly bears upon the
question. The language of Petronius1 independently of the
passages where he introduces persons speaking the vulgar
idiom of the time (lingua rusticri) may be taken as a specimen
of the language as it was then spoken. Nothing but a total
want of knowledge and perception of the Latin language,
could have led people to place Petronius in the first century
VOL. III. U