The Old Roman World : the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization. John Lord
inhabitants, and ruled over three hundred dependent cities, and could boast of a navy carrying one hundred and fifty thousand men.
[Sidenote: The richness of Greece.]
Greece, included under the province called Achaia, was the next great conquest of the Romans, the fruit of the Macedonian wars. Though small in territory, it was the richest of all the Roman acquisitions in its results on civilization. The great peninsula to which Hellas belonged extended from the Euxine to the Adriatic; but Hellas proper was not more than two hundred and fifty miles in length and one hundred and eighty in breadth. Attica contained but seven hundred and twenty square miles, yet how great in associations, deeds, and heroes! When added to the empire, it was rich in every element of civilization, in cities, in arts, in literature, in commerce, in manufactures, in domestic animals, in fruits, in cereals. It was a mountainous country, but had an extensive sea-coast, and a flourishing trade with all the countries of the world. Almost all the Grecian states had easy access to the sea, and each of the great cities were isolated from the rest by lofty mountains difficult to surmount. But the Roman arms and the Roman laws penetrated to the most inaccessible retreats.
[Sidenote: Her monuments and arts and schools.]
In her political degradation, Greece still was the most interesting country on the globe. Every city had a history; every monument betokened a triumph of human genius. On her classic soil the great miracles of civilization had been wrought—the immortal teacher of all the nations in art, in literature, in philosophy, in war itself. Every cultivated Roman traveled in Greece; every great noble sent his sons to be educated in her schools; every great general sent to the banks of the Tiber some memento of her former greatness, some wonder of artistic skill. The wonders of Rome herself were but spoliations of this glorious land.
[Sidenote: The glory of Athens.]
[Sidenote: Temples.]
First in interest and glory was Athens, which was never more splendid than in the time of the Antonines. The great works of the age of Pericles still retained their original beauty and freshness; and the city of Minerva still remained the centre of all that was elegant or learned of the ancient civilization, and was held everywhere in the profoundest veneration. There still flourished the various schools of philosophy, to which young men from all parts of the empire resorted to be educated—the Oxford and the Edinburgh, the Berlin and Paris of the ancient world. In spite of successive conquests, there still towered upon the Acropolis the temple of Minerva, that famous Parthenon whose architectural wonders have never been even equaled, built of Pentelic marble, and adorned with the finest sculptures of Pheidias—a Doric temple, whose severe simplicity and matchless beauty have been the wonder of all ages—often imitated, never equaled, majestic even in its ruins. Side by side, on that lofty fortification in the centre of the city, on its western slope, was the Propylaea, one of the masterpieces of ancient art, also of Pentelic marble, costing 2000 talents, or $23,000,000[Footnote: Smith, Geog. Diet.] when gold was worth more than twenty times what it is now. Then there was the Erechtheum, the temple of Athena Polias, the most revered of all the sanctuaries of Athens, with its three Ionic porticos, and its frieze of black marble, with its olive statue of the goddess, and its sacred inclosures. The great temple of Zeus Olympius, commenced by Peisistratus and completed by Hadrian, the largest ever dedicated to the deity among the Greeks, was four stadia in circumference. It was surrounded by a peristyle which had ten columns in front and twenty on its sides. The peristyle being double on the sides, and having a triple range at either end, besides three columns between the antae at each end of the cella, consisted altogether of one hundred and twenty columns. These were sixty feet high and six and a half feet in diameter, the largest which now remain of ancient architecture in marble, or which still exist in Europe. This vast temple was three hundred and fifty-four feet in length and one hundred and seventy-one in breadth, and was full of statues. The ruins of this temple, of which sixteen columns are still standing, are among the most imposing in the world, and indicate a grandeur and majesty in the city of which we can scarcely conceive. The theatre of Bacchus, the most beautiful in the ancient world, would seat thirty thousand spectators. I need not mention the various architectural monuments of this classic city, each of which was a study—the Temple of Theseus, the Agora, the Odeum, the Areopagus, the Gymnasium of Hadrian, the Lyceum, and other buildings of singular beauty, built mostly of marble, and adorned with paintings and statues. What work of genius in the whole world more interesting than the ivory and gold statue of Athena in the Parthenon, the masterpiece of Pheidias, forty feet high, the gold of which weighed forty talents—a model for all succeeding sculptors, and to see which travelers came from all parts of Greece? Athens, a city of five hundred thousand inhabitants, was filled with wonders of art, which time has not yet fully destroyed.
[Sidenote: Corinth.]
[Sidenote: The wonders of Corinth.]
[Sidenote: Its luxury.]
Corinth was another grand centre of Grecian civilization, richer and more luxurious than Athens. When taken by the Romans she possessed the most valuable pictures in Greece. Among them was one of Dionysus by Aristides for which Attalus offered 600,000 sesterces. Rich commercial cities have ever been patrons of the fine arts. These they can appreciate better than poetry or philosophy. The Corinthians invented the most elaborate style of architecture known to antiquity, and which was generally adopted at Rome. They were also patrons of statuary, especially of works in bronze, for which the city was celebrated. The Corinthian, vessels of terra cotta were the finest in Greece. All articles of elegant luxury were manufactured here, especially elaborate tables, chests, and sideboards. If there had been a great exhibition in Rome, the works of the Corinthians would have been the most admired, and would have suited the taste of the luxurious senators, among whom literature and the higher developments of art were unappreciated. There was no literature in Corinth after Periander, and among the illustrious writers of Greece not a single Corinthian appeared. Nor did it ever produce an orator. What could be expected of a city whose patron goddess was Aphrodite! But Lais was honored in the city, and rich merchants frequented her house. The city was most famous for courtesans, and female slaves, and extravagant luxury. It was like Antioch and Tyre and Carthage. Corinth was probably the richest city in Greece, and one of the largest. It had, it is said, four hundred and sixty thousand slaves. Its streets, three miles in length, were adorned with costly edifices. Its fortress was one thousand eight hundred and eighty-six feet above the sea and very strong.
[Sidenote: Sparta.]
Sparta, of historic fame, was not magnificent except in public buildings. It had a famous portico, the columns of which, of white marble, represented the illustrious persons among the vanquished Medes.
[Sidenote: Olympia.]
Olympia, the holy city, was celebrated for its temple and its consecrated garden, where stood some of the great masterpieces of ancient, art, among them the famous statue of Jupiter, the work of Pheidias—an impersonation of majesty and power—a work which furnished models from which Michael Angelo drew his inspiration.
[Sidenote: Delphi.]
Delphi, another consecrated city, was enriched with the contributions of all Greece, and was the seat of the Dorian religion. So rich were the shrines of its oracle that Nero carried away from it five hundred statues of bronze at one time.
[Sidenote: Greece enriches Rome.]
Such was Greece, every city of which was famous for art, or literature, or commerce, or manufacture, or for deeds which live in history. It had established a great empire in the East, but fell, like all other conquering nations, from the luxury which conquest engendered. It was no longer able to protect itself. Its phalanx, which resisted the shock of the Persian hosts, yielded to the all-conquering legion. When Aemilius Paulus marched up the Via Sacra with the spoils of the Macedonian kingdom in his grand and brilliant triumph, he was preceded by two hundred and fifty wagons containing pictures and statues, and three thousand men, each carrying a vase of silver coin, and four hundred more bearing crowns of gold. Yet this was but the commencement of the plunder of Greece.
[Sidenote: Islands colonized by Greeks.]
And not merely Greece herself, but the islands which she had colonized formed no slight addition to the