DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5253#0689
SCULPTURE AS ARCHITECTURAL DECORATION. 651
masters, and portraits of generals, poets, and philosophers, standing about,
show emphatically how decorative a part was played in Roman residences by
Greek art, torn from its temples and shrines. Villas where statuary and paint-
ing did not form the chief attraction were exceptions : such were several of
Augustus' dwellings, in which rare antiquities and natural-history curiosities
took their place. This fashion of decorating, set by the rich, was followed by
those less favored with means, who are compared, by the poets, to the frog who
strives to inflate himself to the size of an ox. As costly originals could not
be purchased by many, nor even marble and bronze copies, cheaper materials,
such as terra-cotta and plaster, came into extensive use. Tradition tells us that
plaster busts adorned the libraries and studies of many. Thus, in the houses
of the would-be stoics and late philosophers, plaster heads were to be seen of
Democritos, Chrysippos, Zeno, Plato, and others, with their shaggy beards.
The discovery, in the provincial city of Pompeii, in the house of Lucrezio, of
a peristyle adorned with twelve large and ten smaller statues, hints to us the
prevalence of the custom of thus adorning private mansions, which was con-
tinued as late as the end of the fourth century A.D. Had the more extensive
villas on Roman soil, such as that of Maecenas, and that of Hadrian at Tivoli,
been excavated with plan, and not ransacked with ignorant greed through
many generations, how vivid would have been our picture of all this plastic-
decoration, which indeed was co-extensive with Roman dominion, as ruins
testify !
But our idea would be inadequate indeed, of the market for genuine Greek
sculpture and its copies, did we imagine that private buildings consumed the
major part. How feeble is the effort of the imagination to conceive the num-
ber and magnificence of the public edifices which shot up from Roman soil
after the conquest of the Greeks! Here statues, singly and in groups, adorned
the niches, intercolumniations, and roofs, filled the pediments, and lined temple
Steps, theatres, basilicas, baths, gateways, bridges, balustrades, and arches of
all kinds. Like Rome itself, all the provincial cities had their forums, crowded
with temples and colonnades, their capitols crowned by the temples of Jupiter,
Juno, and Minerva, as well as their theatres, amphitheatres, baths, circuses, —
all adorned with sculpture. In 58 B.C., Scaurus, it is said, used for his tempo-
rary wooden theatre in Rome, three hundred and sixty columns of foreign mar-
bles from Euboia and Melos, besides three thousand bronze statues. Agrippa,
while ncdile, 33 B.C., decorated his extensive water-works with four hundred
marble columns, and three hundred marble and bronze statues; his work to
be continued by others. Domitian built so many passages and triumphal
arches, crowded with groups of statuary, quadtigce, and insignia of war, that
he became the object of ridicule. On one monument figured on his coins, the
spaces of the arches are adorned with medallion busts; reliefs and sculptures
occupy the roof and attica ; while two chariots, drawn by two elephants, guided
masters, and portraits of generals, poets, and philosophers, standing about,
show emphatically how decorative a part was played in Roman residences by
Greek art, torn from its temples and shrines. Villas where statuary and paint-
ing did not form the chief attraction were exceptions : such were several of
Augustus' dwellings, in which rare antiquities and natural-history curiosities
took their place. This fashion of decorating, set by the rich, was followed by
those less favored with means, who are compared, by the poets, to the frog who
strives to inflate himself to the size of an ox. As costly originals could not
be purchased by many, nor even marble and bronze copies, cheaper materials,
such as terra-cotta and plaster, came into extensive use. Tradition tells us that
plaster busts adorned the libraries and studies of many. Thus, in the houses
of the would-be stoics and late philosophers, plaster heads were to be seen of
Democritos, Chrysippos, Zeno, Plato, and others, with their shaggy beards.
The discovery, in the provincial city of Pompeii, in the house of Lucrezio, of
a peristyle adorned with twelve large and ten smaller statues, hints to us the
prevalence of the custom of thus adorning private mansions, which was con-
tinued as late as the end of the fourth century A.D. Had the more extensive
villas on Roman soil, such as that of Maecenas, and that of Hadrian at Tivoli,
been excavated with plan, and not ransacked with ignorant greed through
many generations, how vivid would have been our picture of all this plastic-
decoration, which indeed was co-extensive with Roman dominion, as ruins
testify !
But our idea would be inadequate indeed, of the market for genuine Greek
sculpture and its copies, did we imagine that private buildings consumed the
major part. How feeble is the effort of the imagination to conceive the num-
ber and magnificence of the public edifices which shot up from Roman soil
after the conquest of the Greeks! Here statues, singly and in groups, adorned
the niches, intercolumniations, and roofs, filled the pediments, and lined temple
Steps, theatres, basilicas, baths, gateways, bridges, balustrades, and arches of
all kinds. Like Rome itself, all the provincial cities had their forums, crowded
with temples and colonnades, their capitols crowned by the temples of Jupiter,
Juno, and Minerva, as well as their theatres, amphitheatres, baths, circuses, —
all adorned with sculpture. In 58 B.C., Scaurus, it is said, used for his tempo-
rary wooden theatre in Rome, three hundred and sixty columns of foreign mar-
bles from Euboia and Melos, besides three thousand bronze statues. Agrippa,
while ncdile, 33 B.C., decorated his extensive water-works with four hundred
marble columns, and three hundred marble and bronze statues; his work to
be continued by others. Domitian built so many passages and triumphal
arches, crowded with groups of statuary, quadtigce, and insignia of war, that
he became the object of ridicule. On one monument figured on his coins, the
spaces of the arches are adorned with medallion busts; reliefs and sculptures
occupy the roof and attica ; while two chariots, drawn by two elephants, guided