[839] Fathers of a dozen children were released or not called upon; Cod. Theod., XII, i, 55; Cod., X, xxxi, 24. Otherwise disease or decrepit old age seem to have the only effective claims for relief, apart from interest, bribery, etc. The general result of this political economy was that the Empire resembled a great factory, in which each one had a special place, and was excluded from everywhere else. “In England a resident of Leeds is at home in Manchester, and has judicially the same position as a citizen of Manchester, whereas in the Roman Empire a citizen of Thessalonica was an alien in Dyrrachium; a citizen of Corinth an alien in Patras”; Bury, Later Rom. Emp., i, p. 38.
[840] The Verrine sequence of Cicero’s speeches remains a picture up to this date of the usual tyranny of a Roman governor. Few went to the provinces with any other idea but that of rapine. “Cessent jam nunc rapaces officialium manus,” says Constantine, “cessent inquam: nam si moniti non cessaverint, gladiis praecidentur,” etc.; Cod. Theod., I, vii, 1. The revolution of two centuries brings no improvement: “Confluunt huc (Constantinople) omnes ingemiscentes, sacerdotes, et curiales, et officiales, et possessores, et populi, et agricolae, judicum furta merito et injustitias accusantes,” etc.; Novel., viii, Pro. For this law, ineffective as ever, all are enjoined to return thanks to God! a vain parade of legislation.
[841] Cod. Theod., X, xxiv; XII, ix; Salvian, De Gubern. Dei, v, 4, et passim. Titles x, xi, xii, xiii, xiv (of X) deal with the self-seekers who, in the guise of delators or informers, infested the Court in unsettled times and tried to oust people from their possessions by accusing them of treason; cf. Ammianus, xix, 12, etc.
[842] Cod. Theod., XI, vi; Ammianus, xvii, 3; Salvian, op. cit., v, 7, etc.
[843] So Verres, ii, 38, etc.
[844] Cod. Theod., XII, vi, 27, etc.
[845] Ibid., XI, vi, viii; XV, i; and Godefroy’s commentaries. The Defenders of the Cities seem to have been in general too cowed to exercise their prerogative or were gained over.
[846] Ibid., VIII, xv. In this, as in other instances, I refer to the laws against the offences which were committed in disregard of them. Godefroy usually supplies exemplifications.
[847] Ibid., XI, xxx, 4; xxxiv.
[848] Cod. Theod., X, ix, 1, and Godefroy ad loc.; cf. ibid., i, 2; Novel. xvii, 15; Agathias, v, 4. They even attempted to invalidate Imperial grants. Notices on purple cloth were suspended to denote confiscation of estates to the crown.
[849] Cassiodorus, Var. Epist., v, 34; ix, 14, etc.
[850] Palladius, Vit. Paphnutii; Hist. Lausiaca, 63 (not by Jerome, as Godefroy ad Cod. Theod., III, iii).
[851] Synesius, Epist., 79, 96, etc. These may have been isolated devices of Andronicus at Ptolemais. One of his subordinates used to seize objects of art à la Verres. Yet these men were only reached by the happy thought of excommunicating them. In this the great Athanasius had set the example.
[852] Cod. Theod., IX, xxxv, and Godefroy. This was the regular method of scourging, but illegal as a means of enforcing payment of taxes; ibid., XI, vii, 7. The Egyptians were particularly obstinate, and even proud to show the weals they had suffered sooner than pay; Ammianus, xxii, 6, 16.
[853] Cod. Theod., XI, xxviii, 10, 14; cf. vii, 20.
[854] Evagrius, iii, 39. He pretended to have made a sad mistake, and spread a report that he would promptly reimpose it were he not without documentary evidence to enable the books to be reopened. Enticed by this ruse the knavish collectors brought in the accounts they had kept back and a second conflagration was made with them.
[855] Under Arcadius the traffic was barefaced by Eutropius, and probably little less so in the succeeding reign by Chrysaphius:
Afterwards it was more underhand; see Novel. viii.
[856] As Bury well observes; Gibbon, v, p. 533.
[857] Cod., I, xlviii.
[858] Novel. viii; xcv; clxi.
[859] Cod. Theod., III, iii; V, viii; XI, xxvii, and Godefroy’s illustrations. Sold in this way, Roman citizens were not held in perpetual bondage, but regained their liberty after serving for a term; cf. Cassiodorus, Var. Ep., viii, 33. Constantine was shocked to find that deaths from starvation were frequent in his dominions, and so advertised a measure of outdoor relief, which Rectors were instructed to exhibit conspicuously in all parts; cf. Lactantius, Divin. Inst., vi, 20. The same Constantine is the author of an extravagant law by which lovers who elope together are subjected to capital (?) punishment without any suffrance of accommodation, whilst even persons who may have counselled them to the step are condemned to perish by having molten lead poured down their throats. By such frantic whims could legislation be travestied in those days; Cod. Theod., IX, xxiv.
[860] Cod. Theod., II, xiv; Cod., II, xvi; Augustine, Enarr. in Psalm. XXI, etc.
[861] Cod., IX, xii, 10. See Priscus for a general outline of some of the grievances dealt with in this article; Hist. Goth. Excerpt., p. 190; cf. Nov. xxxiii, etc.
[862] Cod. Theod., XI, xxiv; Cod., XI, liii; cf. liv. Libanius in the East and Salvian in the West, at the distance of nearly a century, complain in analogous terms of the manner in which the wealthy residents turned the tribulations of their poorer neighbours to their own profit; De Prostasiis (ii, p. 493 R.); De Gubern. Dei, v, 8, 9; cf. Nov. xxxiii, etc.
[863] Cod. Theod., XIII, i, 16; XVI, ii, 10, etc. “Distincta enim stipendia sunt religionis et calliditatis” is the caustic taunt put into the mouth of Arcadius. The concessions were withdrawn by Valentinian III (Novel. II, xii), ineffectively we may safely assume from Nov. xliii; 1,100 duty-free shops at CP. belonging to St. Sophia alone.
[864] Cod. Theod., XII, xiv.
[865] Ibid., IX, xxx, 2, 5; xxxi. A further hardship was the quartering of soldiers on private persons, but this, of course, was only local and temporary. The Goths and other barbarians were especially harsh and grasping among those who had to receive them when in transit through the country; see Jos. Stylites, op. cit., 86. Generally the military were arrogant towards, and contemned the civil population; Zosimus, ii, 34.
[866] There seems to be no good reason why children should not now be taught from a primer of scientific cosmology, and have a catechism of ethics as well to the exclusion of everything mythological. The human brain is a weak organ of mind, and requires, above all things, a tonic treatment. Nothing can be more enfeebling than any teaching which causes children to imagine that they are surrounded by unseen intelligences having the power to affect them for good or evil. In most instances, a mind so subdued never recovers its resiliency; liberty of thought is always hampered by dread of the invisible; and many of our greatest men have been unable in after life to free themselves from this fatuity. There should, however, be places of public assembly where people could resort for ethical direction and encouragement, without the lessons taught being vitiated or nullified by being made to depend on mythology. But the objectionable name “agnostic” should be discarded, as if to be properly educated were to belong to a peculiar sect. It suggests a country in which a special designation has to be given to all who are neither diseased nor deformed.
[867] Even Cicero affects to think it infra dig. for him to show any correct knowledge of the most famous Greek sculptors; Verres, II, iv.
[868] Suetonius, De Ill. Gram., 2; De Clar. Rhet., 1; Aul. Gell., xv, 11. Crates Mallotes has the credit of being the first Greek Grammarian who taught at Rome, c. 157 B.C. The Rhetoricians had migrated earlier, and in 161 a SC. was launched against them, and again a few years later.
[869] When the system was fully organized under Ant. Pius (138-161), the largest communities were allowed ten Physicians, five Rhetoricians (or Sophists), and three Grammarians; the smallest recognized under the scheme, five Physicians, three Rhetoricians, and three Grammarians; Pand., XXVII, i, 6; Hist. August. Ant. Pius, 11. Antonius Musa, physician to Augustus, seems to have been the first learned man to whom public honours were decreed at Rome, viz., a statue of brass on the recovery of the Emperor, 23 B.C.; Suetonius, August., 59, 81. He was even the cause of privileges being conferred on his profession generally; Dion Cass., liii, 30. Vespasian was the first to give regular salaries to Rhetoricians; he also gave handsome presents to poets, artists, and architects, and granted relief from public burdens to physicians and philosophers; Suetonius in Vita, 18; Pand., L, iv, 18(30). But the idea of remitting their taxes to learned men was old; Diogenes Laert., Pyrrho, 5. That of selling philosophers for slaves when they could not pay them, was also old; ibid., Xenocrates; Bion. Hadrian, called Graeculus from his pedantry, also did much for the cause of learning; Hist. August. in Vita, 1, 17, and commentators. The Athenaeum at Rome was his foundation, an educational college of which no details are known; Aurel. Victor, in Vita. Alexander Sev. went further than any of his predecessors in granting an allowance to poor students; Hist. August. in Vita, 44.
[870] Cod. Theod., XV, i, 53, and Godefroy ad loc.
[871] Zacharias, De Opific., Mund., 40, et seq. (in Migne, S. G., lxxxv, 1011); See Hasaeus, De Acad. Beryt., etc. Halae Magd., 1716. The humblest school was adorned with figures of the Muses; Athenaeus, viii, 41; Diogenes Laert., Diog., 6. A lecture hall was generally called a “Theatre of the Muses”; Himerius, Or., xxii; Themistius, Or., xxi.
[872] Diogenes Laert., Theophrastus, 14; Eumenius, De Schol. Instaur.; Themistius, Or., xxvi, etc.
[873] Gregory Naz., Laud. Basil, 14, et seq. In Julian, ii; Zosimus, v, 5. Synesius pictures the schools as deserted when he visited Athens (c. 410); no philosophers, no painted porches, nothing in evidence but the jars of honey from Hymettus. Hypatia, in fact, was attracting every one to Alexandria. After her murder, however, it doubtless began to recuperate (c. 415). Themistius inveighs against those parents who sent their sons to a place on account of its repute, instead of looking out for the best man. He mentions that pupils came to him at CP. from Greece and Ionia; Or., xxvii; xxiii. The students of this age are described as extremely fractious. At Athens, a great commotion greeted the arrival of a freshman, who was put through a rude ordeal until they had passed him into the public bath, whence he issued again as an accepted comrade; Gregory Naz., Laud. Basil., 16. There also they fought duels, and Libanius reprobates their presenting themselves to him slashed with knives; Epist., 627; Himerius, Or., xxii. Practical jokes amongst themselves, or played on the professors, were often pushed by the students to the verge of criminality; Pand. praef., 2(9). At Carthage St. Augustine found his class for rhetoric so unruly that he threw it up and migrated to Rome. There, indeed, they were more orderly, but indulged in the galling practice of flocking in a body to a certain teacher, whom they suddenly abandoned after a time, forgetting to pay their fees. Sick of it all, he eagerly closed with an offer of the P. U. to take up a salaried post at Milan; Confess., v, 8, 12, 13.
[874] Cod. Theod., XIV, ix, 3; Cod., XI, xviii.
[875] Ibid.
[876] Cod. Theod., XIV, ix, 2. Constantius seems to have founded the first great library (c. 351), and another was originated by Julian; Themistius, Or., iv; see p. 88. Themistius says that he spent twenty years in studying the “old treasures” of literature at CP.; Or., xxxiii (p. 359, Dind.).
[877] Themistius, Or., xxiii; xxviii, etc. Chrysostom, Ad Pop. Ant. Hom. xvii, 2 (in Migne, ii, 173).
[878] See p. 58; Themistius, Or., xxiv; cf. Cresollius, Theatr. Vet. Rhet., Paris, 1620, a huge repertory of details relating to this class.
[879] Themistius, Or., xxviii, etc.
[880] Themistius, Or., xiii; Chrysostom, In Epist. ad Ephes. Hom. xxi, 3 (in Migne, xi, 153); Eunapius, Proaeresius. These popular lectures were often merely colloquial entertainments, such as used to be associated with the name of Corney Grain, without the music. See the correspondence of Basil Mag. with Libanius, Epist., 351 (Migne), et seq., L.’s most effective piece, a dialogue in which he mimicked the fretfulness of a morose man.
[881] Cod. Theod., XIII, iii, 1, and Godefroy ad loc. At this time, however, pagan professors were often much persecuted by Christian fanatics, and Themistius complains that they were even officially muzzled; Or., xxvi, and ibid. Professors were naturally the last to become converts. As to the general esteem in which the class was held, see the poetical commemoration of the Bordeaux professors by Ausonius. Lucian deals satirically with philosophers in his Eunuch, De Merc. Cond., Hermotimus, etc.
[882] Cod. Theod., XIII, iii, 7, and Godefroy ad loc.; Cod., X, lii, 8; Themistius, Or., xxi, etc. Chrysostom, loc. cit. (note 4 supra).
[883] Cod. Theod., XIII, iii, 5. A law of Julian to facilitate his ousting Christian professors, but retained for its literal application.
[884] Themistius fairly covers the ground as to this question; Or., xxi; xxiii. The inferior teachers were exacting, and even extortionate. They accused him of requiring a talent (£240?), but he asked nothing at CP. where he was subsidized; on the contrary, he assisted needy pupils. Still, he received a great deal of money as presents. At Antioch, where it was the custom, he took fees like the rest. For more ancient times and generally, see Cresollius, op. cit., v, 3, 4, etc. What the government paid is uncertain. Augustus gave V. Flaccus £800 a year for acting exclusively as tutor to his nephews; Suetonius, De Ill. Gram., 17. £1,040 has been conjectured as the salary of Eumenius (600,000 nummi, op. cit.). In Diocletian’s Act for fixing prices, ordinary schoolmasters are allowed only about 4s. a month, professors 12s.; for each pupil in a class, of course. The case of M. Aurelius bestowing £400 per ann. on the professors at Athens is also to be noted; Dion Cass., lxxxi, 31.
[885] Chrysostom, Genesis, i, Hom. iii, 3 (in Migne, iv, 29); In Epist. ad Coloss. Hom. iv, 3 (in Migne, xi, 328); Paulus Aegin., i, 14; cf. Quintilian, i, 1, etc. Youths from the provinces studying at Rome were packed home again at twenty, but this order seems to have been dropped later on; Cod. Theod., XIV, ix, 1 (not retained in Code).
[886] On first methods with children, see Quintilian, i; Jerome, Epist., 107; Chrysostom, Ad Pop. Ant. Hom. xvi, 14 (in Migne, ii, 168); De Mut. Nom. ii, 1 (in Migne, iii, 125); Genesis, i, Hom. iii, 3; Epist. Coloss. i, Hom. iv, 3 (in Migne, xi, 329), etc. Libanius, In Chriis (Reiske, ii, p. 868). The first book of Augustine’s Confessions gives many particulars as to his own bringing up in childhood. Greek nursemaids were hired at Rome so that young children might learn the language; Tacitus, De Caus. Cor. Eloq., 29. Wooden or ivory letters were used as playthings. These schoolmasters are represented as very harsh instructors, who cowed the spirit of their pupils. The rod was freely used, and chiefly by the paedagogue. Even scholars of maturer age were corrected by whipping. Libanius used to “wake up the lazy ones with a strap, the incorrigible he expelled.” Epist., 1119. Chrysostom himself accepts as axiomatic that nothing can be done with boys without beating; Act. Apost. Hom. xlii, 4 (in Migne, ix, 308). Quintilian and Paul of Aegina, however, advise going on the opposite tack; loc. cit.
[887] Pand., L, v, 2, etc.
[888] Martianus Capella, an African who lived in the fifth century, is the author of the only self-contained manual of liberal education which has come down to us. His treatise seems to contain all the book-work a student was expected to do while under oral teaching by the professors. Cassiodorus has left a slight tract, but he recommends other volumes to supplement his own merely tentative work. Isidore of Seville, a century later, has also included an epitome of the seven liberal arts in the first three books of his Etymologies, but his exposition is almost as thin as that of Cassiodorus. The remaining seventeen books are a sort of encyclopaedic dictionary with explanatory jottings on almost every subject, well worth dipping into.
[889] Introduced, perhaps, by Boethius; De Arith., i, 1. Τετρακτὺς is found in Greek; Anna Comn.; i, pref.; see Ducange, sb. voc. The latter word is really the original and goes back to Pythagorean times.
[890] See Priscian, Partitiones, xii, Vers. Aen., etc.
[891] After Rome had produced good writers, such as Virgil, Horace, Livy, etc., they were added to the course of literature in the West; Quintilian, i, 8; x.
[892] There is some obscurity about his date, which suggests that he was a centenarian. Ordericus Vit. says he died in 425; cf. Cassiodorus, De Orthograph., 12, etc.
[893] “One father,” says Chrysostom, “points out to his son how some one of low birth by learning eloquence obtained promotion to high office, won a rich wife, and became possessed of wealth with a fine house, etc., or how another through a mastery of Latin achieved a great position at Court”; Adv. Oppug. Vit. Mon., iii, 5 (in Migne, i, 357).
[894] The details of teaching are presented most circumstantially in the rhetorical catechism of Fortunatianus (c. 450).
[895] Cresollius has brought together an immense amount of information on this branch of the art in his Vacationes Autumnales, Paris, 1620; cf. Kayser in his introduction to the lives of Philostratus (Teubner). Blandness of voice was sedulously pursued by professional sophists, and plasmata, or emollient medicaments were much resorted to. There was a phonascus, or voice-trainer, who paid special attention to such matters.
[896] Libanius has outlined very clearly the course of instruction through which he put his class; Epist., 407.
[897] Nothing could be more meagre than the allusions to this subject; even the treatise on geometry by Boethius, which seems to have been the only one current, contains little more than enunciations of propositions.
The Christian fathers ridicule the antipodes severely. “More rational to say that black was white”; Lactantius, Div. Inst., iii, 24; Epitome, 39. “The earth stands firm on water [going back to Thales] and does not turn”; Chrysostom, Genesis, Hom. xii, 3, 4 (in Migne, iv, 101); In Titum Hom. iii, 3 (in Migne, xi, 680); cf. Cosmas Ind., op. cit., x, for other theological authorities on cosmology.
[900] Such as that five represents the world, being made up of three and two, which typify male and female respectively; or that seven equates Minerva, the virgin, neither contained or containing; and other Pythagorean notions; see M. Capella, vii, and the arithmetic of Boethius.
[901] Such is the well-known system elaborated by Hipparchus and Ptolemy, but the Pythagoreans put the sun at the centre, though without definite reasons and with imaginative details; see Diogenes Laert. and Delambre’s Hist. Astron. Ant. Although Democritus, Epicurus, and others held that there were an infinite number of worlds (κόσμοι), they regarded the objective universe as only one of them, and had no idea that myriads of systems similar to that in which they lived lay before their eyes.
[902] Thus M. Capella states that Mercury and Venus revolve round the sun; and Isidore of Seville says the crystalline sphere runs so fast that did not the stars retard it by running the opposite way the universe would fall to pieces; Etymolog., iii, 35.
[903] See Themistius, Or., xxvi (p. 327 Dind.); cf. Boethius (?), De Discipl. Scholar., iii.
[904] Graduated from about A below treble stave to E in fourth space (A to E″ = La2 to Mi4), but there seems to have been great variety in pitch.
[905] Cassiodorus often alludes to the organ of his time, especially in Exposit. Psal. CL, where he describes many instruments. See Daremberg and Saglio, sb. voc.
[906] See M. Capella, ix; Boethius on Music, etc., and Hadow’s Oxford History of Music, 1901.
[907] See Plato, Protagoras, 43, etc. Even in the time of Homer the Greek warriors were practical musicians, but the Romans were not so originally. I can make no definite statement as to how far the Byzantine upper classes were performers on instruments at this date, but see Jerome, Ep., 107. Further remarks on Greek education, with references to an earlier stratum of authors, will be found in Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888, ii, et seq. There is a great compilation by Conringius (De Antiq. Academ., Helmstadt, 1651), which I have found extremely useful. From the observations of Chrysostom (see p. 118), it appears that little advantage was taken of educational facilities in his day, but it may be assumed that the foundation of the Auditorium caused mental culture to be fashionable, at least for a time.
[908] Themistius, Or., xxvi, loc. cit. Theodosius II was the first Christian emperor who systematically fostered philosophy by creating a faculty at CP. and extending clearly to philosophers the immunities granted to other professors; Cod. Theod., XIII, iii, 16; XIV, ix, 3; Cod., X, lii, 14, etc. We are continually reminded that Socrates brought down the sophists of his time from star-gazing and speculation as to the origin of things to the ethics of common life. Thence arose a succession of dialogues in which Utopian republics were discussed, where wives should be in common so that everybody might be the supposititious brother, etc., of every one else. A more harmonious community could not be engendered by such a device; cf. Herodotus, iv, 104.
[909] See the elogium of Berytus in Nonnus, Dionysiacs, xli. From 389, etc., Hasacus (op. cit.) thinks that the school was founded by Augustus after the battle of Actium, but it is first distinctly noted as flourishing c. 231; Gregory Thaum., Panegyric. in Origen, 1, 5 (in Migne, S. G., 1051).
[910] Pand. praef., 2 [7]; Totius Orb. Descript.; Gotlefroy ad Cod. Theod., XI, i, 19, etc.
[911] Nowhere definitely expressed, but inferred from Pand. praef., 2 (superscription), with confirmative evidence; see Hasaeus, op. cit., viii, 2, et seq.
[912] The freshmen rejoiced in the “frivolous and ridiculous cognomen” of Dupondii (equivalent to “Tuppennies,” apparently); in the second year they became Edictionaries (students of Hadrian’s Perpetual Edict); thirdly, Papinianistae (engaged on the works of Papinian); fourthly, Αύται (when reading Paulus); fifthly, the last year, Prolytae (mainly given up to reviewing previous studies); Pand. praef., 2. The last two terms are not explained; the idea is evidently that of being loosed or dismissed from the courses. Cf. Macarius Aegypt. Hom. xv, 42 (in Migne, S. G., xxxiv, 604), who presents a different scheme, perhaps, from the Alexandrian law-school.
[913] The first attempt at consolidating the laws was the Perpetual Edict of Hadrian, c. 120.
[914] Pand., loc. cit. And many more were probably dragged up in court from time to time, which it would be the bent of despotism to taboo. Cod. Theod., I, iv, gives the rule as to deciding knotty points by the collation of legal experts.
[915] It was specially decreed by Diocletian that students might remain at B. to the age of twenty-five; Cod., X, xlix, 1. This law could doubtless be pleaded even against a call to their native Curia. We need not suppose that the periods allotted to the various branches of education were always rigidly adhered to in spite of circumstances. Thus Libanius complains that his pupils used to run off to the study of law before he had put them through the proper routine of rhetorical training, the moment they had mastered a little Latin in fact; iii, p. 441-2 (Reiske).
[916] Sufficiat medico ad commendandam artis auctoritatem, si Alexandriae se dixerit eruditum; Ammianus, xxii, 16. This celebrity was won c. 300 B.C. through the distinction acquired by Erasistratus and Herophilus. See Conringius, op. cit., i, 26.
[917] Cod., I, ii, 19, 22; this and the next title for charities passim.
[918] Even Plato held this notion (Timaeus, 72), but it was flouted at once by Chrysippus; Plutarch, De Stoic. Repug., 29.
[919] Galen gives very correct descriptions of the action of the larynx; Oribasius, xxiv, 9; and tells us how he satisfied himself by various vivisections that the blood actually flowed in the arteries; An Sanguis in Arter. Nat. Cont.; De Placit., i, 5; vi, 7, 8, etc.
[920] Themistius, Or., i.
[921] What appears to be an epitome of current knowledge of natural history and botany is given by Cicero in De Nat. Deor., ii, 47, etc.
[922] See especially Dioscorides, ii. Tinctures and ointments made from toads, scorpions, bugs, woodlice, centipedes, cockroaches, testes of stag and horse, etc., were staple preparations. The realistic coloured illustrations in the great edition published by Lonicerus in 1563 with a colossal commentary, are worth looking at. The pills of seminal fluid (à la Brown-Séquard) decried in the Pistis Sophia appear to have been merely a mystic remedy.
[923] The profession did not yet stand apart from the lay community as pronouncedly as at present. Thus Celsus, author of a noted medical treatise, was an amateur, a Roman patrician in fact; and the precious MS. of Dioscorides, with coloured miniatures, preserved at Vienna, was executed (c. 500) for a Byzantine princess, Julia Anicia, daughter of Olybrius, one of the fleeting emperors of the West.
[924] Less than a century previously Plutarch had declared the common opinion that Fortune, having divested herself of her pinions and winged shoes, had settled down as a permanent inhabitant of the Palatine Hill; De Fortuna Rom.
[925] Art in the time of Augustus and Tiberius has to be judged mainly by the wall-paintings recovered at Rome and Pompeii, many of which are highly meritorious. For succeeding centuries a series of sculptures remain which allow us to keep the retreat of art in constant view. The chief landmarks are: 1. The arch of Titus and the column of Trajan; 2. The Antonine column and the arch of Severus; 3. The arch of Constantine, remarkable for its crudity and for some spaces being filled by figures ravished from that of Titus; 4. The Theodosian column at CP.; though much defaced, the incapacity of the executant is still recognizable. The reproduction of the Arcadian pillar published by Banduri (see p. 49) cannot be regarded as a faithful copy, it being evident that the artist has elevated the bas-reliefs to his own standard. In Agincourt, op. cit., and Mau’s Pompeii these subjects are pictorially represented, as well as in many other works.
[926] Cod. Theod., XIII, iv, 1. Architectis plurimis opus est, sed quia non sunt, etc. (334). His buildings were so hastily run up that they soon went to ruin; Zosimus, ii, 32. Hence, perhaps, C.’s opinion that there were no proper architects.
[927] Cod. Theod., XIII, iv, 1, 4. Few, however, of these regulations, if any, were new; they were mostly in force before the reign of Commodus; Pand., L, vi, 9.
[928] In the eleventh century, after a flush of splendour in the already greatly contracted Empire, owing to the conquests of the Saracens, this particular form of degeneracy began to be manifested. “Les personnages sont trop longs, leur bras trop maigres, leur gestes et leur mouvements plein d’affectation; une rigidité cadavérique est repandue sur l’ensemble”; Kondakoff, Hist. de l’art byz., Paris, 1886, ii, p. 138.
[929] This was not altogether new to the Greeks; for in the juxtaposition of Athenian and Assyrian bas-reliefs at the British Museum it can be seen that even the school of Phidias adhered to some types which had originated in the East, drawing of horses, etc.
[930] See Lethaby and Swainson for arguments on this head. Certain churches in the domical style at Antioch, Salonica, etc., are maintained by some authorities to be anterior to the sixth century; op. cit., x. For illustrations see Vogüé, Archit. de la Syrie cent., Paris, 1865-77.
[931] Thus even maidens in a state of nudity engaged publicly in the athletic games at Sparta and Chios; Plutarch, Lycurgus; Athenaeus, xiii, 20. The parade of virgins before Zeuxis at Agrigentum in order that he might select models for his great picture of the birth of Venus, as related by Pliny, has often been quoted; Hist. Nat., xxxv, 36. Yet even among the Greeks a squeamish modesty existed in some quarters, as is evidenced by the famous statue of Venus by Praxiteles having been rejected by the Coans in favour of a draped one, previous to its being set up at Cnidus; ibid., xxxvi, 4; cf. Lucian, Amores.
[932] Thus Shakespeare: