Nerva (Detail)
Vatican, Rome
What was the position at the time of Trajan himself? After securing his frontiers in Northern Europe, Trajan passed eastward. He crossed the Tigris and made a determined attempt to gain the control of the overland trade with India. At the time of his death, the Roman empire included Europe south of the Rhine and the Danube; in Asia it stretched to the Euphrates.
What sort of men would be required to administer such an Empire? Can we not picture them from our own experience of Empire-building? Imagine for a moment that Trajan had established a permanent occupation of the Punjab. It might well have been. As it was, he died after receiving a check at the hands of the Parthians. What would Roman rule in India have entailed? While the weaker states would have been absorbed, many of the stronger ones would have entered the Empire as subject kingdoms. The allies of Rome would, doubtless, have been rewarded with grants of territory at the expense of the harder fighters. In other words, the problem of government would have needed an infinity of administrative tact, for all sorts and conditions of subject states would have had to be appeased or held in subjection. The Roman governor of the Punjab would have been in the first place a soldier. But he would only have been guided in his general conduct by a rough lex provinciæ, so that in practice he would have had to combine with his military duties those of our Lord Chief Justice. It was not an age of cablegrams. The decision upon a host of matters would necessarily have been in his hands. So with his subordinates. They, too, would have had to solve the nicest problems of practical administration every day—success being their only justification.
These were the duties which Rome demanded of her sons. She educated them for such posts as these. The circumstances in which the Romans lived and the characteristics which their lives engendered, in turn, reacted upon their art. As Mr. Dooley has told us, various nations have various methods of treating “what Hogan calls th’ Muse,” when they ask her “f’r to come up an’ spind a week” with them. A country like Rome doesn’t expect her guest “to set all day in th’ hammock on th’ front stoop, singin’ about th’ bur-rds. She’s got to do th’ week’s washin’, clane th’ windows, cook th’ meals, chune th’ pianny, dust th’ furniture, mend th’ socks an’ milk th’ cow be day, an’ be night she’s got to set up an’ balance th’ books iv an Empire.”
Mr. Dooley, of course, has Rudyard Kipling in mind. But the lines so exactly fit the case of the Roman portrait sculptor, that we may well pursue the analogy further.
Kipling is himself the product of political circumstances. He finds expression for the vigorous matter-of-fact vision of an imperialism that is nearly akin to that of Rome. Kipling joined the Civil and Military Gazette at Lahore when he was seventeen. He lived in India during the formative period. At twenty-four he was back in England with the essential features of his style fixed. The man the Roman State required and for whom the Roman sculptor worked, was the man for whom Kipling writes and whose ideals he expresses in throbbing prose and verse.
But we may pursue the analogy even further. Rudyard Kipling and the sculptor of the “Nerva:” Does a comparison of the styles of these two artists reveal any innate resemblance? In both we see an intense interest in strongly individualized humanity. Neither pays much heed to grace or beauty—in the Hellenic sense of the word. Both are more concerned with actuality than with the more shadowy realms of the ideal. But most striking fact of all, the methods by which both express their body of thought and emotion are strangely similar. Compare a typical Kipling portrait with the “Nerva.” Let us say Miss Minnie Treegan’s picture of Captain Gadsby.
“He belongs to the Harrar set. I’ve danced with him but I’ve never talked to him. He’s a big yellow man, just like a newly hatched chicken with an e-normous moustache. He walks like this (imitates Cavalry swagger) and he goes ‘Ha-Hmm!’ deep down in his throat, when he can’t think of anything to say. Mamma likes him. I don’t!”
This sketch gives us the heart of the Kipling style. Certain as the day—cocksure, some might say. Photographically true? In a sense only. Emphatic? As emphatic as capitals and apostrophes can make it. Imaginative? Yes. If imagination be the faculty for creating a mental image. These are the characteristics alike of the Kipling portrait and the statue of “Nerva.” The sculptor is as emphatic in his message and as certain in his delivery as the poet of English Imperialism. He has not given a transcript of reality but has deepened the essential lines until they speak with telling effect.
It is true that we miss the philosophical calm with which a Greek sculptor would have treated such a subject as the imperial jurist Nerva. But, in some ways we must admit that the Roman portraitist is to be rated higher. If the impression that one is gazing upon reality is the proper object of the portrait sculptor, the Roman gives us the more life-like picture. But if the artist’s first function is to show us nature, so that we may form our own judgment as to what is essential and organic by the aid of his insight, then the Greek who carved the very soul of men was the truer artist.
“Do you remember your mother, my dear?” was the question put to the under-fed, under-clothed, Bermondsey waif.
“Yes, she was a stout woman, what beat me.”
It was a Roman answer, Roman in its magnificent brevity and extraordinary directness. It typifies the artistic method of a society which can spend no energy upon the production of men devoted to pigment mixing and marble cutting for no better purpose than to dream dreams. Something had to be sacrificed. The price Rome chose to pay was that broad view of the world of nature and humanity which alone produces an idealistic art like that of Greece. This is why when Rome finally began to express its thoughts and emotions through marble and bronze it chose a very different method to that of the Hellene. In Greece, the sculptor had needed men and women, gods and heroes; Rome contented herself with one branch of the art—that of sculpture-portraiture. Instead of expressing herself by means of flesh and muscle, limbs and trunk, Rome concentrated all her attention upon the human face.
The Reaction Under Hadrian (117 a.d. To 138 a.d.)
Surely it will be admitted that the facts and the historical explanation fall beautifully into line. If further proof of the direct connection between the ideas fostered by Roman imperialism and the national school of portraiture is necessary, it is to be found in the tendency to revert to a more Hellenic style when the imperialistic wave recedes.
Vatican, Rome
Trajan was succeeded by Hadrian in 117 a.d. The former’s intensely imperial policy had overtaxed Rome’s strength. The keynote of Hadrian’s method was reaction against the forward policy which had been paramount. Hadrian stopped the Parthian war. He abandoned Armenia and the provinces beyond the Euphrates. All Rome’s efforts were concentrated upon the task of finding out how to hold as opposed to how to gain.
There is abundant artistic material in which to trace the effects of this reactionary spirit, for Hadrian was one of the greatest of the Roman builders. His efforts to beautify the cities of his Empire were continuous. Temples and monuments were set up; theatres and baths erected. The grand scale upon which he worked can be judged from Pausanias’ statement that the Library of Hadrian was decorated with one hundred columns of Phrygian marble—the walls of the surrounding porticoes being similarly decorated. Or again, take the case of the City of Antinopolis which Hadrian erected on the banks of the Nile to the memory of his famous Antinous. The walls of Antinopolis enclosed a rectangular space three miles in length. The great avenues that ran through it were bordered by porticoes decorated with Corinthian columns, the principal thoroughfares being ornamented with statues, fountains, and votive monuments.
Upon examination it is found that the leading characteristic of the great artistic wave of the age of Hadrian was a reversion to Greek models. The Maison Carrée at Nîmes was erected at this time—the most perfectly preserved temple in the Greek style now extant. During the years 132 and 133 a.d., which Hadrian passed in Athens, he spent immense sums upon rebuilding the city. Surely an additional proof of his devotion to Greek art and culture. In all his tastes Hadrian was a philo-Hellene—a “græculus,” as the Romans called him. When in Athens he had himself initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. His very appearance witnesses to his preference for Greece and things Greek. Instead of the clean-shaven face of his imperial predecessors, Hadrian wore a beard after the Hellenic fashion.
Turning to the portrait sculpture of the age of Hadrian we can see the influence of the Emperor’s instinctive preference for Greek modes of thought and expression very clearly.
The most typical pieces are to be chosen from the numberless statues of Antinous, in whose honour Antinopolis was built. Hadrian’s love for the beautiful Bythinian youth was in itself rather Greek than Roman. Looking at the “Antinous” in the Vatican collection, and comparing it with the statue of “Nerva,” the reaction against the Roman preference for a vigorous actuality is apparent at once. The “Antinous” is not a portrait as much as the incarnation of a type. The expression of brooding melancholy, rather than the features of the man Antinous, characterizes all the statues of the Bythinian youth scattered through the galleries of Europe. This is the Greek, not the Roman method.