The limits of this article do not permit con sideration of the arts of calligraphy and min iature, so richly developed in the Middle Ages, as seen in the beautiful codices of Virgil in the Vatican, and of Terence, and the Iliad of Milan; the classic age did not lack the taste for art in books, which is shown in the beautiful shape of their characters, as well as in the scenes which illustrate their books. To the Romans belong, above all the classical nations, the merit of giving an artistic shape to the letters of the alphabet.
But the very power of Rome which extended itself over a great portion of the known world was the cause of her decadence. Whilst the new classical civilization diffused itself bene ficially in barbarous countries and art in these places assumed a provincial character, Rome absorbed fresh ethnical elements, and with these the germs of artistic decadence. .
The mania for obtaining grandeur through hugeness, richness through a plethora of orna mentation, was the cause of this decay. The baroque style was the sign of a similar artistic decline in more modern times.
In the public edifices there was already to be noticed this exaggeration : If, for instance, one stood before the forum of Czesar, and the forum of Augustus which surrounds the beau tiful temple of Mars Ultor and the forum of Vespasian and the so-called forum of Nerva, in which is seen the most refined minuteness of ornamentation, proper in the second style of the 1st century, and then before the immense forum of Trajan, an admirable group of edifice;, worthy centre of a capital of about a million inhabitants, one would see already in the Golden Age the tendency to excessive immensity. And it is still more instructive to compare the Thermze of Agrippa and of Titus, elegant and moderate in size, with the enormous construc tions of Caracalla and Diocletian, where the amplitude of the arches becomes gigantic, and the incrustations of colored marble give the whole an Oriental polychrome character.
The Orient, that land of the origins of civ ilization, has disburdened many times on the young West the ardor, the softness, the ex uberance of its thousand years of civilization.
Plastic decorative art had a similar course. Compare reliefs on the arches of Titus and Trajan, which latter with its three arches shows an amplification of the pure Roman arch of the Golden Age, with the superimposed lifeless figures on the arch of Septimius. The monotony of the motives is reflected in the particulars; for instance, in the parallelism of the folds. Only in portraits was the characteristic style kept alive.
And when Constantine, improving on the various elements of the better times, of Do mitian and Trajan, gave orders to compose a monument of this order, the few reliefs that were added' were, like the ivories of the Diptycha, like the Christian sarcophagi, the Omega of classic art and the Alpha of medie val art in Italy. • ' There is little to say about the minor arts in Italy in the centuries of decadence. Deco= native painting was to a great extent supplanted by mosaic, the opus sectile, by tapestry 'and textiles. Gold work began to take on barlairie forms which came from the peoples of the North; the fibulas with rayS ate an instance. Glass work, the flourishing art which also aline from the barbarians, continued to produce many-tinted and artistic vessels, and glassware, encrusted with gold in engraved designs,. andthe enamel in colors which was introduced into mosaics, became, the fashion.
In Roman art during the decadence there were in embryo all the forms of medieval art, and, in treating of this, we must consider. the Roman monuments of the 4th century. Whoi ever, therefore, studies classic art may be said to have exhausted his list in the artistic 'eair amples of the 3d century. .
Bibliography.— Fowler, Harold North, . CA History of Sculpture' (chapters tEtruscan Sculpture' and (Roman Sculpture,' New York 1916) ; Martha, Jules,
Lucto MARIA NI, Professor of Archeology, Royal University of Pisa. .