§83. PAGAN TYPES ADOPTED. 307 



tecture, which is less dependent on the feelings, and more 

 easily kept up by imitation) : and the style of Christian 

 bas-relief, in those and subsequent periods, shows that they 

 kept pace with the gradual downfall. This is quite in ac- 

 cordance with an observation of Vasari ; that in the time of 

 "Julian the Apostate, a church was built on the Coelian Mount 

 to the martyrs, SS. Giovanni and Paolo, the style of which is 

 so much worse than that of Santa Maria Maggiore as to 

 prove clearly that art was at that time little less than totally 

 lost." It was from the general decay of taste, and afterwards 

 from the injury done by the irruptions of Barbarians, rather 

 than from any reluctance to copy from a Pagan source, that 

 the sculpture and painting of the early Christians were so de- 

 based ; and this is evident from some of the oldest representa- 

 tions remaining in the catacombs of Eome, and in other 

 places. It is true that the subjects painted on the roofs 

 and niches in the Catacombs are taken mostly from the 

 Old Testament, according to the custom of the first Christians; 

 and we do not trace in them so much of the Pagan style ; 

 but the figure of the Saviour as the Good Shepherd is evi- 

 dently derived from an ancient model ; and another repre- 

 sentation of him in the same office, dating at a later period 

 (A. d. 450), in a mosaic of Gralla Placidia's tomb at Eavenna, 

 has an unmistakeably classical character.) And even the 

 Anglo-Saxon MSS. in this country bear, in some of their 

 figures, the evidence of their obligations to Eoman originals. 

 (See below, § 84, p. 309.) 



The same imitation of a Pagan type may be traced in the 

 earliest Christian sarcophagi; and in the Baptistery at 

 Eavenna, dating about 400 A. D., and again at Santa Maria in 

 Cosmedin in the same city, erected in the following century, 

 is an emblematic figure of the Jordan, represented as an 

 ancient river god, witnessing the baptism of the Saviour. 

 The imperial purple and the Eoman costume given to saints ; 



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