2o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the simplicity and nobility wliich Rome borrowed from Greece, 

 but figures which in some particulars recall the old art of Asia, 

 and in others already announce the art of the middle ages. The 

 head is encircled with a diadem. The body and the limbs are en- 

 tirely hidden by clinging draperies which are very long and very 

 narrow. The materials which form this species of case are deco- 

 rated from top to bottom with rich embroideries in the shape of 

 medallions, flowers, animals, and even persons. There is no more 

 deception; we are no longer in Rome; fictions so long preserved 

 have finally disappeared; the empire has turned into an Oriental 

 despotism. 



■' Between the two extremes of the series, how many degrees 

 are there which furnish the very best commentaries of history? 

 The heads of all the Caesars, even those of Claudius, the accidental 

 scholar, and of Caligula, the wicked and witty fool, are aristocratic. 

 They show the nobility and the pride of race. You recognize in 

 them the descendants of those grand patrician families which at 

 first seemed to hold exclusively the right to give masters to the 

 Romans. With Vespasian, scion of a middle-class family pushing 

 its way into second-class public positions, the advent of a new order 

 is evident. Vespasian has the round and smooth, double-chinned 

 face of the chief clerk of a commercial or banking establishment. 

 Trajan has the features of a soldier who has probably pushed his 

 way to the front from the ranks. Hadrian, who turns his head 

 to hear the better, whose bright eyes gleam even in the marble, 

 whose half-opened mouth seems in the act of speech, shows the fea- 

 tures of a learned and intelligent scholar. Marcus Aurelius, with 

 his bristling hair and beard, would be taken for a Greek philoso- 

 pher. In Caracalla's looks there is derangement. His eye be- 

 trays that murderous and fantastic frenzy which seized more than 

 one emperor, especially of those who from early youth had been 

 exposed to the temptations of absolute power.* 



" ISTot to personages alone do pictured monuments give life. 



* There is a bust of Julius Caesar in England of which a cast or a copy should be by 

 the side of every expounder of the Commentaries. The presence of the bust would give 

 new life to the narrative, for there is more life in the marble than in the writing. 

 There are in the Louvre, placed side by side, three representations of Nero which tell 

 the story of the man more graphically than the pages of Suetonius. The first represents 

 the youth, whose thoughts are pure, hopes bright, and resolves noble. The second shows 

 the conflict with evil and the beginning of the triumph of sin. The third is so monstrous 

 in its brutality and lust that it must have been taken but a short time before the catastro- 

 phe which terminated the matricide's career. Historians n)ay detail the circumstances of 

 tiie fall of Fiome, philosophers may investigate the causes which led to it, but tiiat hideous 

 face in the Louvre tells the whole story with a force so startling, so instantaneous, that his- 

 tory and philosophy seem weak and wanting. 



