ROMAN SCULPTURE.
Roman sculpture drew its inspiration from two sources. On the one hail I, it is a continuation of the practical industrial traditions of the primitive inhabitants of Italy; on the other, it reflects the more ideal pr.)ducts of the arts of Greece. To the Etruscans may be traced the car dinal feature of the Roman house, the atrium; to the same people were the Romans indebted for their knowledge of the arch, which was destined to play su important a part in European architecture. The influence of the Etruscans upon Roman sculpture is no less marked, especially in their having stimulated an industrial and realistic tendency which promoted art manufacture, to the detriment of the higher forms of art. With no dis tinctive national style of their own, the products of Etruscan sculpture show at first the impress of the art of Asia Minor, and later the successive changes of Greek art.
Fin/scan II in Bronzy', especially utensils of a practical character, were highly prized in antiquity, and sonic of the later bronze statues are not without merit. (See Vol. H., pi 33.) Figure I (AL Jo), representing a boy with a goose, is in the Museum of Leyden. The inscription on his right leg, the bn/ht about neck, and the arm-band un his left arm are Etruscan. But, though we may recognize the advance made upon the rude Etruscan bronzes of early days, we cannot but feel that we !Live here a weak copy of a more lively Greek figure. The same may be said of the more expressive statue of an orator in Florence—accord ing to it*, Etruscan inscription, representing Anlus Metellus 2). We may also recognize in the lifelike face and in the heavy drapery the indi NVIliCh was pushed to the extreme in later Roman times.
hylut m, on Roman .11vlbol,!'3'. civilization had thus already through the Etruscan laid the foundation for Roman sculpture; but, with the spread of the Roman Empire over the East and increased familiarity with the original products of Greek art, the Runizuis were gradually led to find in sculpture a new means by which they might immortalize themselves. The unplastic character of the Roman mind
is evident from the readiness with which foreign images were adopted for the gods. It seemed unnecessary for them to struggle along upon the old line of development, when the entire Greek pantheon with its divinities ready-made could by so simple an expedient as a change of name become naturalized on Roman soil. For this reason we have in the preceding sec tion treated of various types of Greek and Roman divinities as illustrating one continuous line of development.
Ludoz isi Plate IT (fig. 5) is a seated divinity known as the Mars of the Villa Ludovisi. Though found in Rome, the statue is of Greek marble, in its pose resembling one of the seated figures on the east frieze of the Parthenon and in style of execution reminding us of the Apoxyomenos of Lysippos. It is probably, then, a Greek Ares, having changed merely its habitation and name. It seems originally to have been associated with a figure of Aphrodite.
Other Foreign Influence on Roman JIythology. did the Greeks alone influence Roman mythology: Egypt and Asia Minor and Syria and Persia all contributed to swell the Roman pantheon. Prominent among the foreign cults thus introduced was that maintained in honor of the Egyptian goddess Isis. That the Romans had no very definite conception of this goddess may be inferred from the vague statement of Apuleius that " the Phrygians honored her as the Great Mother; Athens, as Minerva; Cyprus, as the Paphian Venus; Crete, as Dictynna; Sicily, as Proserpina; Eleusis, as Ceres; others, as Juno, Bellona, Hecate, etc. Still is she, properly speaking, the feminine All-in-All." She was also reckoned with the Muses, and in Figure 4 carries the plectrum of musical harmony as well as the vase. She is further characterized by the veil with the urerus over her forehead, her fringed mantle, and her long robe, which reaches the ground.