DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.57409#0037
INTRODUCTION TO THE LIVES.
21
sculptors, painters, and architects, were in like manner totally
ruined, being submerged and buried, together with the arts
themselves, beneath the miserable slaughters and ruins of that
much renowned city. Painting and sculpture were the first
to suffer, as arts ministering rather to pleasure than utility ;
while architecture, being requisite to the comfort and safety
of life, was still maintained, although not in its earlier excel-
lence. Indeed, had it not been that sculpture and painting still
placed before the eyes of the existing generation, the repre-
sentations of those whom they were accustomed to honour,
and to whom they gave an immortality, the very memory,
both of one and the other, would have been soon extin-
guished. Of these, some were commemorated by statues, and
by inscriptions, which abounded in and on the different public
and private buildings, as theatres, baths, aqueducts, temples,
obelisks, colossal figures, pyramids, arches, reservoirs, and
public treasuries, and lastly, in the sepulchres themselves,
the great part of which were destroyed by those unbridled
barbarians who had nothing of humanity but the name and
image. Conspicuous among these were the Visigoths, who,
having made Alaric their king, invaded Italy and assaulted
Rome, which they twice sacked without restraint of any kind.
The same thing was done by the Vandals, who came from
Africa, under Genseric, their king; and he, not content with
the booty and prey that he took, or with the cruelties that he
practised, carried the people away as slaves, to their extreme
misery. Among these captives was Eudoxia, widow of the
Emperor Valentinian, who had been slain, no long time pre-
viously, by his own soldiers. For all the best having long
before departed to Byzantium with the Emperor Constantine,
those remaining had in great part degenerated, from the
ancient valour of Rome ; neither was order or decency any
longer to be found among them. Every virtue, nay, all true
men, had departed together; laws, name, customs, the very
language, all were lost; and amidst these calamities, all
acting together, and each effecting its own share of the mis-
chief, every texalted mind had sunk in the general degrada-
tion, every noble spirit become debased.
But infinitely more ruinous than all other enemies to the
arts above named, was the fervent zeal of the new Christian
religion, which, after long and sanguinary combats, had finally
21
sculptors, painters, and architects, were in like manner totally
ruined, being submerged and buried, together with the arts
themselves, beneath the miserable slaughters and ruins of that
much renowned city. Painting and sculpture were the first
to suffer, as arts ministering rather to pleasure than utility ;
while architecture, being requisite to the comfort and safety
of life, was still maintained, although not in its earlier excel-
lence. Indeed, had it not been that sculpture and painting still
placed before the eyes of the existing generation, the repre-
sentations of those whom they were accustomed to honour,
and to whom they gave an immortality, the very memory,
both of one and the other, would have been soon extin-
guished. Of these, some were commemorated by statues, and
by inscriptions, which abounded in and on the different public
and private buildings, as theatres, baths, aqueducts, temples,
obelisks, colossal figures, pyramids, arches, reservoirs, and
public treasuries, and lastly, in the sepulchres themselves,
the great part of which were destroyed by those unbridled
barbarians who had nothing of humanity but the name and
image. Conspicuous among these were the Visigoths, who,
having made Alaric their king, invaded Italy and assaulted
Rome, which they twice sacked without restraint of any kind.
The same thing was done by the Vandals, who came from
Africa, under Genseric, their king; and he, not content with
the booty and prey that he took, or with the cruelties that he
practised, carried the people away as slaves, to their extreme
misery. Among these captives was Eudoxia, widow of the
Emperor Valentinian, who had been slain, no long time pre-
viously, by his own soldiers. For all the best having long
before departed to Byzantium with the Emperor Constantine,
those remaining had in great part degenerated, from the
ancient valour of Rome ; neither was order or decency any
longer to be found among them. Every virtue, nay, all true
men, had departed together; laws, name, customs, the very
language, all were lost; and amidst these calamities, all
acting together, and each effecting its own share of the mis-
chief, every texalted mind had sunk in the general degrada-
tion, every noble spirit become debased.
But infinitely more ruinous than all other enemies to the
arts above named, was the fervent zeal of the new Christian
religion, which, after long and sanguinary combats, had finally