Product Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1888 Excerpt: ... ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. INTRODUCTION. To trace some of the erroneous tendencies of Roman literary and glyptic art, and to shew how they had their origin in the national character and circumstances of the Romans, is the endeavour of these essays. The prevalent emotions and the ideas of a nation are expressed in its literature and in its art, and these emotions and ideas are some of them peculiar to the national character, while some are produced by the national circumstances. I shall endeavour to shew the original bent of the Roman character, and its modifications as affected by circumstances. But in order to criticize the faults into which Roman art was liable to fall we had better begin by tracing the ideal to which they aspired, and then shew how these aspirations were checked or modified, B A passage from Cicero's writings is quoted hereafter, which shews that he valued a mental ideal as the highest point to which art could reach. The Romans as well as the Greeks ascribed it to a divine inspiration. Horace distinctly says that the Greeks derived their powers of poetic art from the Muses, ( Jraiis ingenium, Graiis dedit ore rotundo Musa loqui.--Ars Poet. 323. And we have an acknowledgment from him that the arts were introduced into Latium by the Greeks: (Iraecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes Intulit agresti Latio.--Ep. ii. 1, 156. Now what the Romans thought they themselves received from the gods and what they valued most was imperial power: Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento; Hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem, Parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.--/En. vi. 852. The ideal in matters of taste was only derived by them from the gods through the medium of another nation. Their own notion of the highest of all things, their su...