1840.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



.3.37 



ON THE DISTINCTIVE CAUSES WHICH OPERATED IN 

 PROMOTING THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF GREEK 

 AND ROMAN ART. 



By Frederick J. Francis, Architect. 



Among all those nations the records of whose history reach to the 

 present time, those of Greece and Rome stand out the most conspi- 

 cuous and illustrious. Every thing which relates to them, is by com- 

 mon consent, invested with a sustained and continuous interest, which 

 the annals of no other countries are able to produce. The very men- 

 tion of their names calls up in the mind a thousand noble and spirit- 

 moving recollections, the dynasties of the present age seem to shrink 

 abashed, when placed in comparison with their ancient national gran- 

 deur ; and wo have but to let our thoughts sweep in the range of their 

 contemplations, over the successive epochs of their history to discern 

 at one period or another the ascendancy of every thing great or ex- 

 cellent, whether in political constitution — in national and individual 

 virtue — in the refinements of literature, or the peaceful glories of art. 



And yet, great — eminently great, as were both those countries in 

 politics, philosophy and art, no one can doubt that the circumstances 

 which attended the highest national altitude of the one nation, were 

 singularly contrasted with those which attended the other. In Greece, 

 as we shall hereafter see more particularly, the period of purest poli- 

 tical freedom was contemporaneous with "the development of the sub- 

 limest philosophy, and the most exalted art: while in Rome, it is 

 unhappily notorious, that at the time when their literature and arts 

 were at their meridian, the subjects of merited astonishment to foreign 

 and surrounding states, extorting the homage, and compelling the ad- 

 miration of all— the essential freedom of their political system was 

 totally undermined — the roots of that despotism which was subse- 

 quently the wreck of every thing illustrious among them, had firmly 

 implanted themselves, and their successes in art did not so mucli re- 

 sult from the combined ettbrts of a people coUectivelv imbued with a 

 thorough passion for, and appreciation of, the sublime and beautiful, 

 as from the effects of a few accomplished but tyrannic emperors, who, 

 by means of a gorgeous display of the beauties of art, hoped to blind 

 the once free born citizens of Rome, to the disastrous consequences 

 which must inevitably accrue to the nation, from the establishment of 

 eastern absolutism ; and to amuse them with the tinsel trappings of 

 national prosperity, when they were, all the while, forging for them, 

 manacles, (he most degrading that ever weighed down the energy, and 

 annihilated the spirit of the noble and the free. 



But to confine our i-emarks strictly to the subject we have under- 

 taken brietly to examine. It will not be imagined from what we have 

 already stated, tliat there was any similaiity in the principles which 

 gave to the arts of the two countiies their leading impulse, or contri- 

 buted to their final success. As tliere was a great ditference in the 

 period, so was there a marked contrast in the causes, immediate as 

 well as secondary, which induced their consunimatiiTn among the one 

 people and the otiier: and a steady consideration of this unquestioned 

 fact, will help to make us duly estimate the relative claims of the two 

 to the higher and more illustrious place in our esteem. In both coun- 

 tries we cannot fail to recognise a state of things wherein the arts 

 were loved, cherislied and venerated : but still, Greece in the meri- 

 dian of her arts, under the sway of Pericles, and Rome, correspondently 

 great, under the dominion of Augustus Cassar, present far more nume- 

 rous features of contrast, than analogy ; the whole current of the public 

 mind of the one nation ran in a diflferent channel from that of the 

 other ; and we contemplate with far greater satisfaction the intellec- 

 tual eminence of the one, than the splendid, but withal treacherous 

 distinctions of the other. 



But it will be necessary for tlie riglit elucidation of the subject, that 

 we should glance with some minuteness at the various isolated and 

 connected chain of circumstances which attended the rise of Grecian 

 art, in order that it may the more clearly appear that all analogies to 

 it, are wanting in the correspondent progression of art in Rome. 



The rise of Grecian art took place under circumstances singularly 

 striking. Like other nations in their infant state, the country of 

 Greece was originally inhabited by a wild race of hardy mountaineers, 

 men to whom the fortresses of nature were dwelling places, and the 

 pursuits of the chase, a subsistence. Gradually consolidating them- 

 selves into societies, settled laws took the place of that uncertain 

 authority founded only on might: the savage barbarism of aboriginal 

 life was laid aside, from being predatory wanderers they became 

 civilized settlers; and progressively advanced in mental and moral 

 acquirement. At a very early period of their existence as an inde- 

 pendent people, many of the inhabitants emigrated to the neighbour- 

 ing coasts, and long antecedent to the parent state, reached to great 

 national eminence and distinction. 



The great Ionic migration to the fertile and beautiful settlements of 

 Asia Minor, was the most illustrious of them all ; and it was among 

 these celebrated and volu|)tuous colonies that the real and inherent 

 genius of the (irecian people originally manifested itself. Here philo- 

 sophy, poetry, history and art first found a home ; while the parent 

 state had scarcely emerged from the long pupilage of nations, they 

 had attained the summit of their intellectual development, and were 

 even giving unequivocal symptoms of prostration and decline. They 

 struggled and fell, to rise no more ; but as if by their dissolution an 

 additioual impetus was given to the efforts of continental Greece, it 

 was only subsequent to the protracted war with Persia, which had been 

 the ruin of her colonies, that Athens, the metropolis and heart of 

 Greece, took the van in the department of art; she then vindicated 

 her claim to that superiority which of right belonged to her, as the 

 capital of a free and manly race ; and although formerly she had pro- 

 duced no artists, and possessed no genius equal to those Sicyon, Egina, 

 and Miletus, she now as far outstripped them in the peaceful glories 

 of art, as she had done in the deeds of military and naval valour. She 

 soon reached to her proudest intellectual eminence, and under the 

 fostering sway of the renowned Pericles, showed marvellous proofs 

 that the really sublime and beautiful in material objects were thoroughly 

 appreciated and understood. 



But here we pause for a moment to mark the causes which induced 

 these extraordinary triumphs. How was it that among these small, 

 independent, and comparatively insignificant states, the human mind, 

 as if relieved from a burden which formerly oppressed it, and visited 

 with an elastic and buoyant energy, previously unknown, should so 

 signally assert its appropriate dignity, and display its brightest 

 efflorescence. 



How was it, that although empires, mighty and illustrious, had pre- 

 ceded even the commencement of her national individuality, who had 

 wielded the sceptres of well nigh universal monarchy, and in whose 

 hands were lodged, treasures the most unlimited, they had never 

 evidenced the possession of aught, but a narrow and contracted intel- 

 lect — had never been able to achieve anything remarkable in the region 

 of intellectual superiority, nor were even at the summit of their glory, 

 a tenth part so really and truly great, as were those comparatively 

 small and insignificant states. 



Are we to look at the nations by whom Greece was surrounded, for 

 the germ of that architectural beauty — that sculptural grace — that 

 artistic excellence, whicli pre-eminently'distinguished them? Did 

 they derive from a source extensive to themselves, as we shall pre- 

 sently find to be the case with Rome, those principles of the beantiful 

 and the sublime, which they so exquisitely carried out and acted upon ? 

 Was there ought in the arts of Egypt or the Eastern world, which can 

 be referred to, as giving to the gifted children of Greece, any of the 

 original ideas of that mingled grandeur, simplicity and grace, which are 

 acknowledged so thoroughly to pervade their unrivalled productions? 

 We answer, assuredly not. We think it is doing great injustice to 

 the striking originality of the Grecian mind, to contend that as Rome 

 derived her arts from Greece, so Greece derived her arts from Egypt 

 or Asia. There may be, and there doubtless are, distant and obscure 

 analogies between the architecture of the Nile, cumbrous as it was, and 

 the symmetrical productions of Greece ; but still, whatever the Greeks 

 borrowed in this branch of art, was only incidental and subordinate, 

 and became so essentially changed by its tranmission, as to well nigh 

 the product of their own independent and unaided genius. And then, 

 whatever differences of opinion may exist upon this point, it must be 

 admitted by all, that in sculpture and painting they owe to the Egyp- 

 tians, absolutely notliiug. Look at the ideal beauty of their immortal 

 creations, that god-like expression of majesty which pervades one — 

 that manly grace, or matronly dignity which distinguishes another ; 

 that winning tenderness which beams forth in a third ; and in the 

 whole range of either Egyptian or Asiatic art, can there be adduced 

 one single group or figure, by the contemplation of which a Grecian 

 artist might have caught one additional ray of inspiration, or been 

 enabled so to guide his chisel or his pencil as to convey to his works 

 one previously unimagined lineament of grace, expression or beauty. 

 Emphatically we answer, assuredly not. The Egyptians, a severe 

 people — hard as their own granite — only reached a certain point in 

 the region of art, and attained to no progressive and advancing ex- 

 cellence. In their thorough hatred of reform, and scrupulous attach- 

 ment to the miscalled wisdom of their ancestors, they laid equally an 

 interdict upon novelties in art, as upon novelties in political aflFairs ; 

 and consequently, in architecture, were never able to reach that sin- 

 gular combination of the sublime and beautiful which pervades the 

 works of Greece : in sculpture, were ignorant of that true ideal beauty 

 founded in the abstract upon nature, yet soaring above any individual 

 instance of it: and in painting, they were, we are competently in- 



2 Z 



