ROMAN CULTURE
Since time immemorial Roman culture has been viewed as a very distinct and pronounced culture. Often, owing to Rome’s political might, the cultural aspect is not done justice to in a study of Rome. However, Roman culture is associated with a cultural identity that is as strong as Rome’s political identity. The idea is to examine the elements of culture with an eye for a reflection of early Roman society in it. The elements of culture covered in this essay broadly include literature and language, sculpture, architecture and art. In order to study the early Roman culture, it is imperative to have an understanding of the fact that Rome had a cultural proximity to Greece and that the challenge is to look for the distinctive Roman features of their culture, apart from the elements that are borrowed from Greece. We shall now take a look at Roman Literature and language.
From the very beginning, Rome had been in touch with Greek culture. Culturally, it was the Greek who gave the inspiration for the birth of Latin literature. Once the Romans came directly in contact with the Greeks, they admired their achievements and attempted, with brilliant success, to imitate them. What the Romans did was to take Greek models and invest them with a specifically original Roman quality. The ages of private patronage have given the world much of its greatest literature.
The most prosperous Greek community is the Tarentum in the South which provides the first literary figures. Livius Andronicus, a Greek playwright, wrote Latin plays including comedies and tragedies. He also translated the Odyssey. His younger contemporary, Naevius, also adapted this epic tradition and offered an early version of the mythical link between Rome and Carthage. He also wrote a number of plays. Ennius was revered as the Father of Roman poetry. He wrote both plays and epic poetry. He had been grounded in Greek as well as in Latin and Oscan culture. Adapting the Greek philosopher Euhemerus, he devoted a poem to rationalizing the traditional mythology and particularly the Father-figure Jupiter. Plautus is another important figure in the history of Roman literature He permanently divorced Latin poetry from spoken tongues which prepared the way for Roman literature’s specific glories that were to come. He adapted a famous Greek genre to an almost totally different Roman dramatic purpose. His model like Livius were complicated, soft and sophisticated plays of the Athenian new comedy familiar to Roman soldiers.
Prose writing came about much after poetry. The political, religious and judicial life led to the use of a language different from that of everyday’s. Early Roman prose writing was pre-occupied with clarity and not art. The earliest Roman orator whose name has come down to posterity was the old censor, Appius Claudius-the Blind. Eloquence began to develop into an art in Rome only in the period of the Punic Wars. Funeral orations also came about this time.
Theatres were only temporary structures and audiences often rowdy had to be forcibly attracted form adjacent boxers, dancers and charioteers who formed the part of the programme. Ariosto’s Casaria which acted at Ferrara led the renaissance of ancient drama, blended 3 plays of Plautus and Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Error” is largely modelled on Plautus “Menaechmi” with borrowing from his Amphitryo. His successor Terence wrote for a more cultured age and especially for Scipio Aemilianus and it was believed that Scipio was part author of Terence’s play. Their writer is less robust and more contemplative than Plautus and Caesar found Terence’s pure Latin less comic than Menander. Moliere’s ‘ecole des Maris’ and fonrberies de Scapin are funnier version of Terence’s Adelphi and Phornioand the ‘Women of Andres’ has had a long English career from 16th century translations right down to the adaptation of Thornton.
Merits, fashions and chances have all played a part in deciding why some ancient works have survived and other perished. Ennin’s nephew Pacuvius was a distinguished tragedian. Cicero called Pacuvius ‘first’ in tragedy. The first Roman prose writer was Lato. He excelled in oratory and history both closely linked with government and way of life of Roman Republic. He produced first great Roman historical achievements, his 7 book ‘origines’ is now lost. As wealth and culture increased, an artistic, aristocratic weterie at the turn of the century made poetry socially ‘smart’. Orator and poet Quintus Catulus adapted to Latin in various kinds of Hellenistic poetry including the fashionable miniature brand of epic and elegiac and erotic epigrams and trifles which were new to the language. Catullus continued the line of Plautus and Terence. His surviving manuscript of 2,300 lines was discovered and comprised of long and 109 short poems including epigrams elegies, hymns, miniature epics and diatribes against his enemies. Hymns with a racing rhythm are dedicated with uncontrolled passion to the bloody, horrific cult of Attis associate off the Asian mother goddess Lybele. Less morbid poems of Catullus which by their freshness inspired the Renaissance humanists and this maintenance of personal life in a time of flux makes Catullus above all others as a poet of the 20th century. Cicero was a gifted and energetic writer, with an interest in a wide variety of subjects in keeping with the Hellenistic philosophical and rhetorical traditions in which he was trained. He wrote his ethical treatises and most famous of these moral essays are ‘ On Duties’, ‘ the boundaries of Good and Evil’, ‘ on old age’, ‘On Friendship and the political Studies’, ‘On the Laws’ and ‘ On the state’. No medieval epoch was unaware of Cicero’s Speeches. The Roman literary language had only just attained perfection. Cicero had perfected it for prose, and it only remained for poetry to acquire a Virgil. Julius Caesar apart from being a distinguished writer of Latin poetry was also an enemy of Cicero. Caesar and Antony were the ablest orators of 1st century BC. Caesar adopted a simple, direct style and Antony preferred more emotional methods which made his speech more effective. Caesar’s style of narrative is represented by his rapidly moving accounts of Gallic wars and Civil wars. Caesar’s supporter was the historian Sallust, his work comprise the first important historical monographs in Latin.
Augustus came into inheritance after Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC. Augustus himself was the author of a skilfully composed political testament i.e. ‘ReGestae’. Augustus was himself a kindly and patient listener at the recitation of poems and history, speeches and dialogues, which formed the usual mode of first publication in those days. Under Augustus literature flourished. The epic of Virgil, history of livy, the personal poetry of Horace, Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid were soon recognised as Latin classics worthy to be mentioned with those of the Greeks. The author most earnestly encouraged to write on behalf of the state and its ruler were Virgil and Horace. Virgil was one of the greatest poets of Augustanperiod. Virgil astonished literary circles at Rome by the novelty of his ten short eclogues. Virgil’s epic was called Aeneid. The Aeneid is explicitly a national laureate poem. The poet seeks to enshrine all Roman life in his pages, to epitomise Roman history and to introduce allusions to characteristics pieces of myth and ritual. He is at the head of those Latin ministers who are noteworthy not only because they transmitted Greek culture, orinfluenced later cultures but because of the supreme quality of what they themselves wrote. He wrote of shepherds and produced the greatest of all ancient poems on country life. In the Georgics Virgil’s best work had been done. Agreeing with Virgil that Augustus had performed wonders by bringing peace, Horace signalized his own succession as ‘poet lucreate’ by writing the praises of the princeps in his formal secular hymn.He made his reputation with the Satires (Sermones), a special of composition which may be turned truly Italian. His chief literary asset was the charm of a suny, genial character. He had in addition a gift for composition and an industry which raised him to the level of original genius.
Titus Livius or Livy (59 BC – AD 17) was from Patavium. His history of Rome consisted of 140 books with full 20 – 30 volumes. It was written in rich, fluent prose, making loftily imaginative use of many sources without too much critical analysis. His rousing narrative of Hannibal’s invasion is a master-piece of dramatic art.
Elegiac poetry is represented by Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid, the work of Gallus and other elegists of the period not having survived. Love is the main theme of the elegiac poet who also reached its zenith in this Augustan age. After a long and varied Greek history, the elegy had become in Roman hands ‘tearful’ the expression of unhappy love- a branch of Latin poetry which has exercised an incalculable effect on Latin literature. Tibullus was perhaps the most successful of all the elegiac poets in the sense that his talent was the best adapted to the elegiac medium. He is one of the most satisfactory of ‘minor poets’. Lacking profundity of thought and intensity of feeling, he had a gracefully melancholic inspiration, not unlike that of Gray, and a faultless ear for the natural cadence of the elegiac couplet. Propertius is in most respects strikingly different from Tibullus. His genius, compounded of fiery passion, imagination and lyricism, but lacking in the vigour that ensures equality of performance, renders him in some ways one of the most modern of Latin poets. He is a poet with a strongly symbolistic cast of mind, and what may be called “mythological symbolism” was for him a necessary method of poetic expression. Ovid’s character as a man was not really separable from the question of his merit as a poet. His literary output was enormous in quantity, extremely varied in subject matter and unequal in quality. His principal collections of poems are the ‘Amores’, the ‘Heroides’, ‘the art of love’, ‘the Trstia’ and the letter from Pontus. Ovid in contrast to Propertius was moving away from the self-imposed restriction in his later work. He was the last great writer of the Roman Golden Age.
When we term the golden Age of Roman literature as “Augustan,” we ought to remember that it began long before Augustus and ended before his death. Of all the great writers, only Ovid and Livy outlived Augustus. Summing up the characteristics we may say that on the whole, polish and restraint were its most prominent characteristics.
The one thing that is elaborately considered to be a manifestation of Roman culture is early Roman sculpture and architecture. Before the beginning of the Christian era, the revival of portrait sculpture took place in the Greco-Roman world. Few of the many factors which led to the development of this art after third century BC were growth of philosophical reflection, quickening of hero worship, greater interest in self-analysis and a belief in survival after death.
Romans were among the world’s greatest art patrons and the elite strata of Rome witnessed a belated artistic impact of Greece towards the last century BC. Latin literature gives evidence of decoration of palaces/villas with Greek reliefs, decorated urns, sarcophagi, statues, busts etc. their taste in portraits was of type which recorded the features and expressions of the individual within his social and historic setting and without sparing his physical oddities. The main objective remained to capture their achievements. Romans not only poured in funds but also enriched the period’s art with Roman definiteness and dignity, and also a challenging new range of subjects- their own resolute, tough; square faces with a blend of northern endurance and southern exuberance.
By the second century BC, portraits in marble, stone etc. showed hints of death mask styles. But it was in Egyptian paintings that funerary portraiture peaked. In contrast Rome had an increasing demand for realistic portraits, while in Italy portrait statues came to be installed in public places. The sculptors for meeting this demand came from the coastlands of eastern Mediterranean and Aegean as employment of marble was a technique known only to them. Almost all were Greek and even the greatest of them could never achieve a high social status or position in the society till a very late period of the empire.
During first century BC the characteristic style had the quality of ‘verism’- dry realism, as the emphasis was increasingly on the subject as a man of affairs and not a philosopher. Each emperor like all others wanted to be recognizably unique for which verism was employed. With the period of great rulers setting in from the last century BC, we see a gradual shift towards idealism as it provided the occasion for infusing an element of grandeur and idealism in the artwork. Dictators around this time, for the purpose of publicity, used coin portraits. Coins were also used for effective portrayal of the emperor. For example, Galba was a grim, elderly soldier who deliberately reacted from the extravagances of Nero’s reign. So his coins carried the same theme while another designer attempts to idealize him by designing Galba’s more regal ad grandiose portrayal.
Moving to statues, in the age of Hadrian, statues of Antinous were built, whose untimely death led to his deification in the east. His statues had heavy idealization and represented every device of romantic sensuousness. The voluptuous contours, low unintellectual brow, heavy lips and dreamy gaze of Antinous did not portray a spoilt, overfed boy but rather the eternal sorrow of youth which passes and perfection which dies. The art piece shows a marked departure from the methods of verism in this period. Another statue of a youth in the second century AD is of Marcus Aurelius. This masterpiece of psychological interpretation displays a pensive abstracted melancholy characteristic of Aurelius. It also portrays the time when busts were remote, focusing more on the undercurrent of feelings.
During the age of Antonines, dramatic effects of light and shade came into play by either leaving the marble surface rough or polishing it. Flesh was shown with a brilliant, porcelain like surface and this smoothness, especially of the face is contrasted with ever curlier, more intricately undercut hair and beard which climaxed under Commodus whose religious boldness is apparent in the direct identification with Hercules, whose lion’s skin and club he bears. But the portrait is still contemplative, severe and self-contained. With Commodus portraits and practice of open divinization, the concept of the emperor as some sort of a human being, however extraordinary, gives way to much more extravagant conceptions.
Another important aspect of roman art- sculptural reliefs that decorated monuments focused on narrating events of national significance. Both direct and indirect approaches were employed to commemorate current events. To illustrate: the direct approach is employed and depict the triumphs of Greek over Persians to celebrate the success against Gaul. While a more direct approach show a relief of victory of Romans over the Macedonians.
Relief scenes were utilized in major way in the Ara Pacis consecrated in 13 BC to commemorate Augustus’s safe return from Gaul and Spain. It was adorned with reliefs reproducing sacrificial scenes and stands in a walled precinct sculptured with reliefs in two tiers. The designs engraved upon the Altar include set pieces of legendary patriotic scenes, and another personifying Mother Earth (Italy). The principal relief however shows the procession which took place when the Altar was consecrated. The reliefs show the emperor as a befitting human – an image that Augustus wanted to popularize in the Principate. The style of relief work of Ara Pacis is grave and tranquil to the point of stiffness. This gravity is deliberately reminiscent of the old Republican traditions which Augustus was seeking to recapture. While the adults’ figures were scarcely individual, the figures of children had great distinctness. The picture had a few sentimental touches that remind us that this was a human gathering and that Romans were vivacious people. Elements of informality mingle with air of serene stateliness.
The technique of sculpture reliefs made progress rapidly during succeeding centuries. After dabbling through a host of processes, a strikingly different technique is displayed in the Arch of Titus.- erected to celebrate the capture of Jerusalem in AD 70. Both the Arch of Titus and Ara Pacis show processional scene but the difference is stark as the decorator of the Arch employed deep shadows and vigorous interplay of light and shade aimed towards the effect of complete illusion. The sculptor of the Arch played an important part in understanding the sculptural rendering of spatial depth.
Soon relief sculpture embarked on wider ambitions. One such astonishing monuments where we see new techniques is the Column of Trajan perhaps designed by Apollodorus of Damascus. The Column’s pedestal is ornamented with sculptured trophies – one of the favourite motifs of imperial art. This column has scenes numbering to 118 in a spiral form. It rejected the illusionism and acquired the “map technique”. The method with its anticipations of early Christian and Byzantine art has been employed which vividly expressed the characteristic Roman sense of history : the past is unfolded as a basis and guide for present and future.
Even though the themes of Roman triumphal relief sculptures remained battle scenes , only a relatively small proportion of the total space actually dealt with the actual fighting scenes. Greater interest was shown in the results, meanings and backgrounds of each battle. So a variety of incidents were depicted like the imperial address, sacrifices, work of fortification, marches and journeys, envoys and prisoners. In this richly detailed epic man remained central to all things and acted as a measuring unit; the scene dominated his doings and emotional reactions.
Another Column, erected by Marcus Aurelius is similar to Trajan’s in terms of spiral relief. The end of the Antonine age (when it was erected) had been heralded by ominous barbarians threats and the anxious and serious character of these times, which soon got reflected in portrait busts also found strong expression here in torturous, windblown hair and draperies, strained bodies and troubled, pathetic expressions.
In an epoch of rising crisis, centralization and autocracy, the representation of human element on the Triple Arch of Septimus Severus, is eclipsed. The listeners are depicted in the scene as collective and impersonal. They seem to be a single undulating mass in a narrow layer between the foreground plane and the neutral background, concentrated without any real individual differentiation. On the Arch of Severus at Lepcis, the representation of the emperor is very different from the “first citizen” on Augustus’s Ara Pacis. Severus stands elevated above his puppet like entourage in rigid, hieratic glory. As the shadows closed round the Antonine Golden age, the epoch of undisguised autocracy is heralded by sculptors. These arches of Severus are the last continuous narrative reliefs known to us.
During this period where there was a growing interest in afterlife, inhumation gradually replaced cremation, which in turn led to growing demand for decorating the private sarcophagi of prosperous people usually with elaborate scenes of battle.
The overall picture that therefore forms is that Rome made some lasting contributions in the field of art with different rulers leading to a variety of styles, techniques and themes in the world of art with changing social, political and economic scenario providing a background to the journey of art through the period of the great empire.
Ancient Roman architecture adopted certain aspects of Ancient Greek architecture, creating a new architectural style. The Romans were indebted to their Etruscan neighbours and forefathers who supplied them with a wealth of knowledge essential for future architectural solutions, such as hydraulics and in the construction of arches. Later they absorbed Greek and Phoenician influence, apparent in many aspects closely related to architecture. Roman architecture flourished throughout the Empire during the Pax Romana.
Factors such as wealth and high population densities in cities forced the ancient Romans to discover new architectural solutions of their own. The use of vaults and arches, together with a sound knowledge of building materials, enabled them to achieve unprecedented successes in the construction of imposing structures for public use.
Examples include the aqueducts of Rome, the Baths of Diocletian and the Baths of Caracalla, the basilicas and Colosseum. They were reproduced at smaller scale in most important towns and cities in the Empire.
The Ancient Romans intended that public buildings should be made to impress, as well as perform a public function. The Pantheon is an example of this, particularly in the version rebuilt by Hadrian, which remains perfectly preserved, and which over the centuries has served, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, as the inspiration for countless public buildings. The same emperor left his mark on the landscape of northern Britain when he built a wall to mark the limits of the empire, and after further conquests in Scotland, the Antonine wall was built to replace Hadrian’s Wall.
The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD preserved partly the commercial Pompeii and residential Herulaneum, which allows us to reconstruct the main features of the house of time. Most houses were not unlike those of well to-do Greeks of the preceding epoch. But there is one apparently un-Greek feature, the long and lofty atrium. Half court and half front room containing the family altar and ancestral statues together with parts beyond could be glimpsed as one entered the front door. At the other end of the atrium was the peristyle, the centre of the private part of the building surrounded by bedrooms, reception rooms, kitchen and dining room usually made to accommodate nine people and including rooms for different aspects of winter and summer. The peristyle sometimes contained a small garden. When the towns began to decline and when times were not so good, the frontage on either side of the entrance facing the streets were let off as shops. In some houses at Pompeii and Herulaneum, there seem to have been upper floors to which the domestic water supply, when it existed was carried by leaden pipes. In addition to fine houses and monuments, there was great deal of squalor.
After the Great Fire of 64 AD, in which ten out of fourteen Augustan regions of the city were destroyed, Nero used the opportunity not only to build a fantastic palace, the Golden House, but also to impose upon the capital some of the orderly ideas of town planning. The construction work undertaken by Nero was more permanent in character and henceforward tenement blocks, a local Italian creation in which shops, workshops and flats were united into single unit and thus the house achieved ever increasing size and solidity. A few houses possessed arcaded courtyards like Italian Renaissance palaces, for these blocks housed both rich and poor. This was the great social architecture, showing how houses as well as public monuments could be constructed with dignity for the needs of almost all ranks of a great organized society.
The most characteristic and original achievement in the field of architecture were due to the availability and utilization of a clean sandy earth-pozalana. It was the best binding material. By the time of Augustus red pozzalana was already in use and it was during the next centuries that this was employed for the most daring construction.
Another Roman achievement was the development of arch. The Romans first adopted the arch from the Greeks and implemented in their own building. The Roman use of the arch and their improvements in the use of concrete and bricks facilitated the building of the many aqueducts throughout the empire, such as the Aqueduct of Segovia and the eleven aqueducts in Rome itself, such as Aqua Claudia and Anio Novus.
The dome permitted construction of vaulted ceilings and provided large covered public space such as the public baths and basilicas. The Romans based much of their architecture on the dome, such as Hadrian’s Pantheon in the city of Rome, the Baths of Diocletian and the Baths of Caracalla.
The arches were put to use for very practical use-aqueducts which carried water over land. Keeping in mind the economy these were built were built using masonry channels rather than pressure resisting pipes, since cast iron was unknown and lead or bronze was costly.
The employment of arches and of concrete led to a peculiar Roman achievement; the amphitheater. These gigantic oval buildings represent a doubling of a semi circular Greco-Roman theatre of which the first permanent Roman version constructed of stone and pozzalana was completed by Pompeii in 53 AD. In the reign of Augustus the first permanent amphitheatre had been constructed in the capital and the largest and most famous of all, the Colosseum was initiated afterwards by the Flavian emperors and open for use in AD 80.The span of Colosseum is 620 by 500 feet, the space for its arena measuring about 290 feet by 180 feet.
The employment of the vault-the arch produced sideways is one of their most original and enduring contributions to architecture. It was found by Romans to be the perfect expressions for their new ideas and imperial aspiration. The Romans also achieved extraordinary skill and delicacy in decorating their vaults not only with paintings but also with titles particularly with panelling and coffering of stucco. All these techniques were lavished not only on the imperial residence but on the superb baths constructed for the general public. The Baths were designed not only for comfortable and luxurious bathing but for club life, sport and other activities. The Stabain Baths at Pompeii began at an early period and the plan lacked overall coherence. The baths built by Hadrian at Lepus Magna in AD 126-127 showed a more developed phase. The plan was symmetrical. Entering from the north the visitor came first to the big open air swimming bath surrounded on three sides by a colonnade. Beyond this was the frigidarium, a splendid paved and vaulted hall with plunge baths at each end.
Developing from the experiments with half domes over niches, the egg shaped or hemispherical dome-an arch rotated on its axis played a novel part in Roman architecture. We possess a marvellous example in the best preserver of all Rome’s ancient structures, the Pantheon, originally erected by Agrippa, at the time of Augustus, but its present version was reconstructed by Hadrian. This extraordinary structure has undergone many losses and changes, yet the wall and vaulting of the round temple and its huge colonnaded portico still remain. The whole building is lit by a single circular opening, 127 feet wide at the summit of the dome. Through this open space light was regularly diffused.
The Greek and Roman temples were different. The Greek temple stood on a low base of 2-3 steps and had a continuous colonnade round all four sides whereas the Roman was raised on a high podium and approached by steps from one direction only. It was entered by a deep porch and had attached half columns instead of a colonnade round the sides and back.
The largest of the early temples of Rome was that which was dedicated in 509BC to the Capitoline Jupiter in the first days of the Republic. It was often burned and refashioned but it was about 185 feet wide and 200 feet long and had a porch of 18 columns arranged in three rows of six with a line column along each side meeting lateral extensions of the back wall which was plain. The Maison Carree temple was built at Nimes in Provence in 16BC.Its podium stood on a platform surrounded by porticos. Its deep porch had six columns across the front .three open bays on each side and attached columns extended round the sides and back of the shrine. It was of the Corinthian order, well carved in the local limestone with an admirable frieze of tendril pattern.
The temple of Bacchus at Ballbek is unusual among Roman temples in being surrounded by a colonnade. The approach to the interior or cella is through a wide porch flanked by staircase towers. At the extreme western end stood the cult image, within a baldachin, on a platform.
The temple of Vesta at Tivoli was built in first century BC.The shrine was approached by a flight of steps and was surrounded by Corinthian Columns. The round temple of Venus at Baalbek showed the bold use of conventional classical elements in the late Roman period with the broken pediment on Corinthian columns, the niches reflected as bites out of the entablature and the circular cella with doomed roof.
Colonnaded halls were a Roman innovation. Roman basilicas (law courts, town halls) were normally oblong halls with an internal colonnade round all four sides. The tribunal or seat of the magistrate was placed opposite to the entrance. The imposing Basilicae was the Basilica Nova which was begun by Maxentius and finished after AD 313 by Constantine in the Roman Forum.
Thus the Romans saw their architecture as a means to project to the rest of the world that they were a powerful force. Their grand stadiums, used for entertainment, their aqueducts and Public baths all had practical use, but if one examines accounts by Roman officials of their architecture, they describe it in terms that shows they viewed the architecture as a means of glorifying Rome and sampling to the rest of the world what they were capable of and that they were the greatest civilization of the time.
The next most important element of culture is Roman Art. Roman art is generally defined as much more than the art of the city of Rome, rather it is the art of the Roman Civilization that covers a period of more than a thousand years. Roman Art was influenced by many things. They were influenced by some countries that they ruled over, like Greece, Egypt, and Africa. The age of Hellenistic art gradually gave way to the predominance of Roman art. Rome of the Caesars along with the uniform administration of the Empire produced something of a more or less uniform ‘Imperial Art’ which since it embodied all the most progressive tendencies came in time to set the fashion everywhere. The special roman characteristics came increasingly to the fore during the reign of the Flavians and Trajan. Art also took an increasingly popular and provincial guise and little by little discarded its classical ideals. Artistic development above all in the field of portrait sculpture now linked up with the old roman tradition that had lived on without a break in the masks of ancestors which stood in the halls. The portraiture of the romans and that of the Greeks is that the latter was almost exclusively designed for public monuments whereas the former existed mainly to serve private needs. The development of Roman art did not, however, by any means run a uniform course. To the very end there two different tendencies alongside one another: the Hellenizing, idealistic, typicalizing, theatrically emotional style of the court aristocracy on one hand and the native, sober, naturalistic style of the more mobile middle class on the other.
In the Augustan age sculpture was the leading art, but thereafter painting comes more and more to the fore and in the end almost completely supplants sculpture. By the third century copying of Greek works of art had stopped and for the next two centuries it is the painting that dominates the field of interior decoration. Painting is the late roman and early Christian art par excellence and takes the place held by sculpture in the classical age, it is the popular art of romans, speaking to all in the language of all.
Never before was there such a mass production of pictures, never before was painting employed for such trivial and ephemeral purposes in Rome. Anyone appealing to the public, informing it upon important affairs anxious to plead his case with it, or win adherents for his interests was well advised to use pictures for the purpose. In Rome the picture is news, editorial, advertisement, poster, chronicle, political cartoon, news reel and film drama rolled into one. Their love of pictures reveals besides pleasure in the anecdotal and interest in documentation and eye witness accounts, a kind of primitive, childlike, insatiable desire for sights and illustrations. It is however from this very waxwork style or film style which no doubt appealed to the uneducated with their pleasure in the actual, from this very desire to depict memorable events as vividly and as fully as possible that the epic style emerged which is the style of Christian and western art.
Roman art mainly consisted of history painting ( the depiction of scenes in which essentially transient phenomena are caught and translated into spatial terms through skilful optical technique )and was illustrative, Illusionist, epic, dramatic and as full of event as film whereas ancient Greek art was plastic and monumental.
In late Roman and medieval Christian art the utterly different method is employed which is called the ‘continuous’ as opposed to the ‘isolating’. By this Franz Wickhoff means the style arising from an epic, illustrative, cinematographic impulse in art which portrays the various stages of an action in the same framework or landscape without a break.
The special Roman characteristics came increasingly to the fore during the reign of the Flavians and Trajan until, in the later Empire, they finally got the upper hand. During the last centuries of the Roman Empire, when political and cultural developments were going on in Rome, art started discarding its classical ideals. Artistic development now linked up with the old Roman tradition that had lived on without a break in the masks of ancestors which stood in the halls. Roman art was very colourful and decorative. There was a mass production of pictures. Roman art mainly indicated the wealth and status of the subject whereas the Greeks paid more attention to the aesthetic and natural beauty and qualities of a subject. Ancestral portraits, an important feature of the aristocratic funerals, formed a significant part of the Roman art.
Aristocratic art took the course of being impressionistic in style. The trend of impressionism in Roman art, in fact, is lyrical rather than epic. Impressionism is sometimes called optical realism because of its almost scientific interest in the actual visual experience and effect of light and movement on appearance of objects. Impressionism was a factor that hastened the dissolution of ancient art. Roman art, when compared to Greek art, is illustrative, illusionistic, epic and dramatic and as full of event as a film. Roman art was more secular and utilitarian and showed grandeur and scale. Roman art consists mainly of painting, the depiction of scenes in which essentially transient phenomenon are caught and translated into spatial terms through skilful optical technique. Painting is the late Roman and early Christian art par excellence and takes the place held by sculpture in the classical age. It is the popular art of the Romans speaking to all in the language of all. Arnold Hauser is of the view that anything that is depicted in the transposed form indeed constitutes the very essence of art. Roman painting was one of the most versatile mediums of Roman art. The style of representing human figure through art in the ancient world begins and ends with ‘frontality’. The course of this development starts with the subordination of art to religious cult, goes on through the reign of aestheticism, and ends in a new form of spiritual dependence; beginning as the expression of an authoritarian social order, it leads through the periods of democracy and liberalism to become again the expression of a new spiritual authority.
These elements of Roman culture mirror the society that existed in Rome. There are, however, numerous limitations to this approach of social evaluation through cultural interpretation. A lot of cultural elements would have been ruined over the centuries and that limits the scope of study to only those ruins that have survived till date. Hence, there is a possibility of misinterpretation of the society in absolute terms. However, it can be safely said that there is more than enough evidence that has survived to draw a fair approximated conclusion. The impact of Roman culture on the world is immense as it paved the way for the development of new technologies in the field of sculpture and architecture. Romans took art to numerous places and expanded the scope of art. The development of language and literature is another major, unparalleled contribution of the Roman civilization. It is therefore safe to say that Roman culture was parent to various other cultures that developed in later times, and is a distinctive identity of the Romans.