Identifier: grandeurthatwasr00stobrich (find matches)
Title: The grandeur that was Rome; a survey of Roman culture and civilisation:
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Stobart, J. C. (John Clarke), 1878-1933
Subjects:
Publisher: London, Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd
Contributing Library: Internet Archive
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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that each figure has a value of its own. The florid taste ofthe millionaire Attalids of Pergamum had made a reactionarymovement in the direction of crowded and tangled forms.Now these Roman friezes carry the demand a stage further. Inthese processions we have a compact mass of faces, eachadmirably and no doubt faithfully portrayed, but ruining bytheir very numbers the artistic success of the whole. Thespectator is not to admire a composition. As in Friths Derby Day he is to pick out a face here and there and cryThat is Agrippa: that is Messalla : that is Germanicus. Inits essence such a demand is not the mark of a people with anysense of art. On the contrary it is the measure of their crudityand Philistinism. Nevertheless this new demand enabledthe versatile Greek genius to win for itself fresh triumphs,especially in realistic portraiture and narrative relief-work. Pat-t of the claim which Wickhoff and his followers makefor the originality of Roman art is based upon the belief that246
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AUGUSTAN ROME the limitations of Greek art are not self-imposed ; for example,that the Greeks did not know how to express emotion in theplastic arts, that they could not make realistic portraits, thatthrough ignorance they never perceived the beauty of a starkcorpse, that Pheidias lacked the intelligence to find a dramaticcentre for the Parthenon frieze, and so forth. Such assumptionsas these are easily disproved. Greeks were capable of realism(witness the Ludovisi reliefs *) but they preferred to idealise.In portraying giants, barbarians, or slaves they could expresstransient emotions, but for Greeks and gods in statuary theydeliberately preferred serenity. The Greeks sought to concealtheir art rather than to display it, as we have learnt from thediscovery of the subtle secrets of their architecture, and it isrash to assert of any principle of craftsmanship that the Greeksdid not know it. Many of the claims of Rome to originalitymay be refuted by this consideration. What I believe to

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